Dark Castle Preps 'All Cheerleaders Die' and a 'Haunted Hill' Prequel

Dark Castle Entertainment is an odd little beast of a production outfit. Headed by uber-producer Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, The Matrix), the company originally focused on horror remakes (House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax) and originals (Gothika, The Reaping). More recently they branched out to a wider variety of material (Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, Dominic Sena's Whiteout). Their next two projects, however, will be solidly horror-based.

ShockTilYouDrop reports that All Cheerleaders Die, a horror-comedy, and "another chapter in the House on Haunted Hill saga," possibly a prequel, are under development. No writers or directors are signed at this point. Evidently the company is also mulling over other sequels to properties they developed at Warner Brothers.

In October 2006, Dark Castle entered into an agreement with finance company CIT whereby CIT would finance 15 feature films over six years with a projected budget of $15-$40 million for each picture. According to the deal, Silver has has sole creative control, and Warner Brothers would distribute. RocknRolla and Whiteout were made under that deal, but Silver has recently been shopping RocknRolla around to other distributors, reportedly because Warner Brothers thought the flick was "very English."

Dark Castle has some turkeys on its resume, but who doesn't? I like their past emphasis on dark, brooding, adult-skewing horror, even if the films didn't always succeed. (And, really, who can deny the genuis of Paris Hilton in House of Wax?) So I'm cautiously optimistic about their upcoming projects. Do you have any feelings, one way or another?