Time for a new horror series on FEARnet.com! This one's called The Dark Path Chronicles, and it comes from director Mary Lambert. And if I have to remind you that she directed the first Pet Sematary, then I question your legitimacy as a horror geek. So far they've posted two episodes and a pair of behind-the-scenes clips. All I know is that it's got vampires in it!

...and the journey of Mandy Lane continues. Screen Daily reports that Sony has acquired the video rights to all of Senator's upcoming releases, and that also includes Clock Tower, Splice, and the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers. Also from Screen Daily: News on the excellent Paranormal Activity, which is getting sold all over the planet and (yes) being remade.

Curious about that Jason Voorhees documentary you've been hearing about? Get the scoop here. Also, Twitch indicates that the sequel to the fantastic [REC] begins shooting next week. Did you miss the trailer for the next Clive Barker adaptation. Jessica covered it yesterday: Book of Blood.

And frankly there are so many random little tidbits floating around thanks to all the horror geeks' coverage of the American Film Market ... I don't even know where to begin. Instead of linking to each news niblet individually, I'll link you to the AFM ONLY pages at Dread Central, Bloody-Disgusting, and Shock. Lots of random goodness to click through there, horror nerds.

Random question for the experts: Which is the scariest video game?

As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?

I haven't seen Jonathan Levine's The Wackness yet (I know, I know), but I have seen his long-in-limbo All the Boys Love Mandy Lane -- almost a year and a half ago now, at SXSW 2007. It's a smart, expertly made horror film that's been mistreated in a way that Levine, who now has a career despite his debut's fate, should never forgive. As Sony Classics prepares The Wackness for a nationwide release, Levine has lined up two more projects that will take him through 2009.

The first, Positive, is a thriller about a young man who visits his fiancee's family in Martha's Vineyard but winds up being seduced by the woman's sister. The second, currently (though I'm guessing not for long) titled Echelon Vendetta, will be an adaptation of David Stone's spy novel about a CIA "cleaner" (think a superspy version of Michael Clayton) who investigates the death of a friend and colleague and stumbles upon something more nefarious. Levine, who wrote the screenplay for The Wackness but not Mandy Lane, will write both projects, and direct at least Positive. More at The Hollywood Reporter.

Horror, character comedy, romantic thriller, spy actioner... That'll be quite a resume. Now if he can actually convince -- who is it now? Senator Films? -- to put All the Boys Love Mandy Lane into at least a few theaters...

Believe it or not, the fight to bring All the Boys Love Mandy Lane to the big screen isn't over yet.

Almost two years ago, I watched the story of a good girl caught on a secluded ranch while people kept dying at TIFF's Midnight Madness. It got some good buzz (here's our review), but then it went into limbo -- one that's been stretching on for so long that director Jonathan Levine has already been wowing audiences with his next film, The Wackness.

But now ShockTillYouDrop has posted the U.S. one-sheet for the film (part of it is above -- go there to see the poster in its entirety). IMDb says it's hitting screens in August, but Shock says that there's no release news to share. However, there will, at the very least, be a screening of it in Chicago, as part of Horror Con (June 28).

Will we ever see Mandy Lane again? Or can we just resign ourselves to getting a new poster, teasing us, once a year?

Known in some circles as "that movie where Sir Ben Kingsley hooks up with Mary-Kate Olsen," The Wackness premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival where it was met with an unbelievable online reception. Just about everyone I spoke to fell in love with this quirky drug-related dramedy from director Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane). While I didn't get the chance to see it (our own Scott Weinberg did), these good vibes have me all antsy to check out The Wackness when it hits the Tribeca Film Festival later this month.

Here's a bit from the synopsis: "... Luke (Josh Peck) is a socially uncomfortable teenage pot dealer with no friends, issues with his parents, and a whopping lack of confidence with girls. He trades weed for sessions with his therapist, Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), whose much-younger wife (Famke Janssen) is slipping away from him. Squires, a drug-addled shrink with a hairline retreating to the back of his neck and a state of mind slouching back to adolescence, is an unlikely role model-but the two of them forge a friendship based on a mutual need: neither one is getting laid."

Check out both exclusive photos (including a larger version of the image above) from the film in the gallery below. The Wackness arrives in theaters on July 3rd. (And is it me, or does Kingsley have a little Keitel going on in that pic?)

There is a very short list of filmmakers who are so perfectly in tune with my sensibilities, so completely on my wavelength, that each of their projects threatens to collapse my critical faculties and reduce me to a drooling, adoring mess. One such person is little-known Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, whose enigmatic sci-fi mind-blowers Cube and Cypher were about as far up my alley as you could go before it starts to hurt. (I haven't seen Nothing yet, but I will soon.) So I've been hungrily devouring every morsel of information about his upcoming Splice, which is about a pair of scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who discover a way to create new kinds of creatures in the lab by splicing DNA, and then go and introduce human genes into the experiment. My squeamishness about genetic horrors (no joke: I consider Cronenberg's The Fly to be the scariest movie I've ever seen) and my affinity for Natali's approach makes me think this one could really do a number on me.

This week on Trailer Park, darkness falls across the land.

1-18-08
The turning point in this trailer is when a party is plunged into darkness. This preview, which has been playing with Tranformers, is one of the coolest trailers I've seen in... well, possibly ever. A farewell party in New York City is interrupted by a power failure and a massive explosion several miles away. The roar of something huge is heard in the distance, and a large piece of shrapnel turns out to be the Statue of Liberty's head. Over on IMDB this is still being called the Untitled J.J. Abrams Project. Speculation is running wild on this one. Just check out all the comments on Erik's posting about the film's teaser website. I for one am dying to see what this is all about.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
As Jette recently mentioned here, this teen horror flick has dropped off the summer release schedule entirely, been picked up by a new distributor and reassigned an early 2008 release date. In this fairly dark tale of teen lust and angst, a former ugly duckling has fallen in with the popular crowd. Every boy in her class has lusted after her, and during a weekend excursion to a remote ranch, several highly hormonal young men hope to get to know Mandy a whole lot better. Things turn ugly, though, and people start dying. The trailer resorts to lots of quick cuts, preventing the viewer from seeing who is getting offed, but there's a manic energy here that I find intriguing. Check it out:

For a few days now, we've been pondering just what the heck was going on over at The Weinstein Company with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which was supposed to open July 20, being distributed by TWCs genre division, Dimension Films. Jette noted on Wednesday that the film finally got a poster just two weeks prior to release date -- not a positive sign, although the poster itself was pretty cool. Then on Thursday, Erik posted about rumors that were circulating that the film might be getting dropped from its release date slot. Now, we know it's not just rumor.

Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere posted Friday afternoon that he has official word that Mandy Lane has been acquired from Weinstein/Dimension by Senator Entertainment, Inc, a prodco/finance outfit with offices in Berlin and Los Angeles who, sayeth Wells, have an existing relationship with the Brothers Weinstein. A look at the company's website, which I can kind of decipher with my minimal knowledge of German acquired in three years of German classes way back in high school isn't terribly revealing. I guess we all saw this coming, but darn it, I'm feeling let down. The whole thing seems a little odd -- what's up at TWC around this film? It got rave reviews at Toronto and is sitting pretty with a solid 71% on Rotten Tomatoes -- not too shabby for a horror flick. So what gives?

The film's official MySpace site does say Mandy Lane will not be coming on July 20, so if you already had plans to catch the film next week, you'd better make other plans. The site does promise a later theatrical release date, so perhaps all is not lost yet for Mandy Lane or everyone who's been hearing it hyped since last freaking year at Toronto. Wonder if the film will get a spandy-new poster to go with its new distrib-Daddy?

We knew something was just a tad off when the only poster for the soon-to-be-released indie horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane hit streets only two weeks before the flick was supposed to land in theaters. Not to mention the marketing campaign was non-existent (Cinematical has spent more time hyping up this film than The Weinstein Co. or Dimension Films). And so I'm not surprised to hear (via Shock Till You Drop) that rumor has it Weinstein/Dimension has officially dropped Mandy Lane from its July 20 slot. Keep in mind this hasn't been confirmed, and there's no information on whether the film will be released at a later date instead, but all signs are pointing to ... Mandy Lane getting screwed, but not loved.

The film, which first premiered at last year's Toronto Film Festival (to rave reviews from our own James Rocchi), focuses on a pretty girl (Amber Heard) who's invited to a weekend party at a secluded ranch. However, once there, partygoers begin mysteriously disappearing one by one -- and, well, so it goes. Could this hesitation on Dimension's part have something to do with the negative attention horror films have been receiving lately, and/or the box office failure that was Grindhouse? And what does this mean for the other fantastic horror-related films The Weinstein Co. picked up from various festivals throughout the year -- like, say, Teeth (which is a film I absolutely loved and haven't heard a peep about since seeing it in Berlin back in February)? Chalk this one up as rumor for now; we'll let you know when more info is revealed.

Last September, I was lucky enough to make it out to the midnight madness TIFF screening of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, the horror homage by first-time-feature director Jonathan Levine. You might remember James Rocchi's glowing review of the film here. After a long period of quiet on the movie front, Bloody Disgusting is reporting that Dimenson Films is finally sending the flick to theaters this July 20th -- less than a month away! If you don't find this news exciting, you might want to give Mandy Lane another chance.

The premise is simple -- Mandy, played wonderfully by Amber Heard -- is the easily-loved popular girl who is admired by all men, and loved by the popular and loner alike. However, there's a bit of darkness that surrounds the girl -- the film starts with a death due to her appeal -- which is never good when kids are planning for a weekend in seclusion. She, her unpopular best friend and some group of popular kids head to a ranch and start getting picked off while Levine channels a bunch of horror films from the past. Heck, there are even a few scenes that were even dead-on homages to Dazed and Confused. While it is, by no means, immensely original, it's entertaining in a way that many of the current horror movies aren't. Then again, I'd take Scream over the present torture porn films any day. Besides, after all the sequels this summer that haven't quite lived up to hype, wouldn't something a bit different be a nice change of pace?