C.l.Gregory Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Okay, for those of you just tuning in, here's the recap: On Saturday, we hesitantly wrote up an item from RushPR saying that Jessica Simpson was in advanced talks to star in the low-budget horror film The Kentucky Fried Horror Show. The source seemed iffy, but we weren't the only site to post the item and we posted it with the appropriate caveats. Cut to yesterday, when, on the same day we learned that the Joker photo whirling around the Web was a total fake and the 'grey Hulk' story was an equally bogus one that we had jumped on, we also heard from Jessica Simpson's publicist that the Kentucky Fried story was absolutely false. With all these stories going belly-up at once, I decided to write up a general screed about phony-rumor stories, which you can read here. Okay, now you're all caught up.

This morning, I was contacted by C.L. Gregory, the director of The Kentucky Fried Horror Show, who seemed quite surprised to hear about Jessica's alleged non-participation and is flatly contradicting the publicist's assertion of no talks. To set the record straight, he's also willing to go on record to give details on the talks his production has apparently had with Simpson. There's no sense in paraphrasing the man -- 'll let you hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Here is what Gregory had to say to me about this whole thing:

"So here is EXACTLY where we are at with this. We have had serious contract negotiations with Jessica's people from day one. They were VERY interested in a horror project for Jessica based on my phone discussions with her people when we approached them over a month ago. Script(s) were sent, revisions were made and then at THEIR request they wished to move forward on the project with us making an offer. I've been in development talks with a large Studio to work out the final details for production for this film so its taking us a great deal of time for development. As we told Jessica's people before, we're not shooting until late summer early fall so we have plenty of time. We made an offer last Friday, a very SIGNIFICANT offer for her role in this film and for her publicist to make a comment like that is simply rude and unprofessional ..."

Those of you who were reading Cinematical over the weekend probably noticed that we tacked up an item originating from RushPR, declaring that Jessica Simpson had signed to star in a low-budget horror film called The Kentucky Fried Horror Show, from director C.L. Gregory. At first glance it seemed iffy, but once you read past the trumpeting headline, even they conceded that the singer-actress was only in talks, so it didn't seem terribly far-fetched, and we ran with it. We weren't the only ones to grab the story -- Bloody-disgusting.com also ran the piece, and because the whole thing seemed sketchy, we each threw in some kind of editorial hesitation. On our side, we added a "so and so says" tag onto the end of the headline. BD chose to simply leave things with a question mark. Well, Jessica Simpson's publicist just contacted me an hour ago to tell me that the whole story was complete hogwash, which makes me feel like kind of a douche for putting it up. After today's debacle with The Joker and the 'Grey Hulk' episode, that's three strikes for us, and I'm sure some other sites are also wondering how silly they look for publishing stuff that's made up out of thin air.

The problem is that, as I see it, there's very little room for improvement, because lots of sites are just fine with being lowest-common denominator sites and they are always going to pull us down to their level. Just today, I've seen several prominent movie sites linking to a website that claims to know for sure that Jessica Biel has signed to play Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk. I've never even heard of the site that is sourcing this story, and yet their stuff is getting picked up. Is it possible this story is legit and it will pop up in Variety in two days? Of course it's possible, but what are the odds, and why not ignore it in favor of stuff that is well-sourced so as not to take chances with our reputations? The answer, obviously, is that the online movie community has decided there's very little downside to publishing rumors these days. People are more than ready to eat up rumors and asks for thirds and if you're not on the rumor-publishing bandwagon, that's fine -- you can maintain the standards of Variety and have no traffic and no interest. And before you accuse me of getting on my high-horse, let me say again that this is something we are guilty of as well -- I'm ashamed to say we actually used The Star as a source for a story not too long ago, and so did lots of other sites.

If the director of The Kentucky Fried Horror Show has his way, Jessica Simpson is going to be the next great "Scream Queen." Rush PR News is reporting that director C.L. Gregory, who helmed the 2006 direct-to-video zombie film Blood Lake, is in serious talks to get Simpson to star in his next indie-horror project. The film, which thankfully has nothing to do with the 1977 comedy The Kentucky Fried Movie, is set in the Pentecostal south and follows a group of college kids on a road trip who come across a murderous religious cult. Cinematical has contacted Simpson's reps to get a comment, but no word yet.

Now brace yourself, this is what the director had to say about Simpson's on-screen abilities: "I felt that the script needed someone that could carry the weight of its character and without doubt, Jessica was my first and only consideration for the role. She's never done a horror film to date and we felt she was ready for a project like this as it will be a very emotional and demanding piece of work for her. But I don't see anyone who can pull it off better than Jessica Simpson." I guess he saw some kind of "emotional range" in her work in Employee of The Month that some of us might have missed. Gregory seems to be mining the "starlet set" for the cast, since he is also trying to cast Hilary Duff for another role in the film. As for Simpson, she has finished up work on the Working Girl remake Blonde Ambition, which is due for a summer release -- so she could have time in her schedule. I'm just not convinced Simpson pull off a horror film heroine role, but at least we know she has the "lung capacity" for some truly ear-piercing screams.