Nightbitch, TENET, Sinkhole: Weekly Round Up

3rd August 2020

Nightbitch, TENET, Sinkhole: Weekly Round Up – As COVID-19 continues to alter the way we all live our lives, so the movie industry is trying desperately to figure out how to deal with the ongoing uncertainty around movie theatres, returning to physical production, and generally just getting films out there. We saw one interesting way to tackle the problem this week from British director Rob Savage, best known for his short film Dawn of the Deaf, who released his shot in lockdown movie HOST on the “Netflix for horror” streaming service Shudder to mostly positive reviews.

While the indie-film scene seems to be doing everything it can to get its act together, bigger studios seems to be having a harder time dealing with the pandemic, and that has been none more clearer than when it comes to the many release dates of The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated sci-fi actioner, TENET.

After several push backs on an official release date from the studio, Warner Brothers have now officially confirmed that TENET will be released internationally across 70 countries on August 26^th before getting a domestic US release a week later on Labor Day weekend. However, the US release will on be in “selected cities”.

No doubt this news will disappoint US audiences eager to finally see the new movie as it remains unclear what Warner’s full strategy actually is here. Will the film be getting a VOD release alongside this? Will the Labor Day opening leader to a wider release across the States? At this point we don’t know, but either way it appears here in the UK we’ll finally get to see just what the hell TENET is later this month.

It seems that we may be seeing the start of a kind of werewolf revival, what with the news a few weeks back that Ryan Gosling will be starring in the Blumhouse produced, Leigh Whannell directed update of Univeral’s classic monster movie The Wolf Man, and now this week’s news that Amy Adams is set to star in a new movie tantalizingly titled Nightbitch.

Admittedly, the movie isn’t technically a werewolf film, with Adams’ reportedly set to star as a “former artist who is thrust into stay-at-home domesticity after the birth of her son, who becomes increasingly worried that she may be turning into a dog”.

It’s an odd premise, I’ll give it that, but it has something of a werewolf feel about it, even if it doesn’t technically involve werewolves. I’m all for this renewed interest in the sub-genre, as it’s one I have often thought is somewhat under-represented. The issue with werewolf movies is usually to do with finding a new angle in which to approach the story, and Nightbitch certainly seems to have got that covered.

The film, based on a novel of the same name by author Rachel Yoder which is scheduled for release at some point next year, is being produced through Annapurna, a production company that Nightbitch Adams herself has worked with on more than one occasion in the past, including on films such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s not-quite-scientology fable The Master, David O’Russell’s true life crime caper American Hustle, and Spike Jonez’s science-fiction romance Her.

We’ll stay on the horror train here as we also got some interesting news this week about a new project from Get Out writer/director Jordan Peele.

Since Get Out’s release Peele has done a lot of work within the genre, including taking up hosting duties of CBS All Access’ updated reboot of the cult classic television series The Twilight Zone. He has also worked as a producer on a number of projects, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman remake, which is scheduled for release later this year, being one of the more prolific ones, and he will continue in that role on the newly announced sci-fi horror Sinkhole.

Sinkhole will reportedly star Issa Rae and is about a strange pit that appears in the back garden of an otherwise seemingly perfect home. Perhaps most interestingly, the film began life as a short story born in a writer’s room and based on the theme “I married a monster”. Quite how that fits into the synopsis is unknown, but it sure does sound interesting.

They say horror thrives in times of social and political unrest, which no doubt explains the wealth of news surrounding horror movies this week, and our final update continues on that trend.

A few weeks back now we learned that the folks behind the excellent 2019 horror comedy Ready or Not would be helming a Scream reboot, based on the Wes Craven classic. However, news since then has shifted the project closer to what most would consider straight sequel territory as opposed to an entirely new thing.

Last month we learned that Neve Campbell was in talks to return to the franchise as Sydney Prescott and not long after we learned that David Arquette, who played Deputy Dewey Riley in all four of the previous outings, had signed on to return. Well, this week we’ve got news that Gail Weathers herself, Courtney Cox, has also agreed to head back to Woodsboro and face off against Ghost Face one more time.

The revelation that this reboot is, in fact, more like Scream 5 has been somewhat disappointing for some fans who didn’t enjoy the last two entries into the series, but for myself, who doesn’t mind Scream 3 and absolutely loved Scream 4, this is all looking pretty positive. – TENET, Nightbitch, Sinkhole: Weekly Round Up

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