Red Eye Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Dreamworks is firming up the details for the thriller Disturbia, their first production since being acquired by Paramount at the end of last year. The film is centered around a high school student - to be played by Shia LaBeouf - struggling to deal with the death of his father. When the boy is sentenced to house arrest following "an outburst of anger at school," he, Rear Window-style, becomes convinced that his neighbor is a serial killer. Working from a script by Christopher Landon (which was subsequently rewritten by Red Eye scribe Carl Ellsworth), D.J. Caruso (who made The Salton Sea and Two for the Money, in addition to doing a ton of TV work) will direct.

Since audiences loved Red Eye, and LaBeouf has be consistently praised by critics pretty much no matter what he does, it sounds like this one might have some potential. Plus, the story is creepy as hell. Filming is set to begin at the end of this month for a 2007 release.

One would think that with a name like Wes Craven - his real name, by the way - that a life as a director of horror films would be the man's inescapable fate from the very start. While the 66-year-old Cleveland-born Renaissance man has created some of the most revered films of the modern genre like A Nightmare On Elm Street and the breakout Scream trilogy, there is more to him than that. He studied writing, psychology, philosophy and literature at Wheaton College and Johns Hopkins University, taught college, and did not even start working in the film industry until the age of 31 as a sound editor.

It was in 1971, though, when his path would intersect with that of another future horror legend - Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham. Their meeting first resulted in the largely forgotten Together, footnoted only because it starred a 19-year-old woman named Marilyn Briggs (who consequently met brothers Artie and Jim Mitchell, who rechristened her Marilyn Chambers and made her a porn icon in Behind The Green Door). However, the collaboration made fellow tyro Cunningham want to work with Craven again. The next year saw the release of the Cunningham-produced, Craven-directed The Last House On The Left, a remake of Swedish titan Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, believe it or not, a raw and grimy low-budget effort about a pair of murdering rapists who unknowingly hole-up in the house of the parents of one of their victims. The film became a cult favorite and launched Craven's career in movies.

Craven's second film, the savage and effective 1977 survival tale, The Hills Have Eyes, was about a family who, while traversing the desert, encounters a group of inbred maniacs who prey on these seemingly helpless castaways. Nearly three decades later comes the first remake of Craven's own work, with the new version helmed by French it-director Alexandre Aja (High Tension), released in the U.S. on March 10. Craven, who produced the film for Fox's boutique arm Fox Searchlight, was cool enough to call me at home for an impromptu chat. After I insulted his parentage and suggested a scenario in which he couple with a Cheerio (thinking I was being pranked by my friend Eric), I apologized and basked in fanboy glory for the remaining 22 minutes of our phoner.
 

In an interview with Suicide Girls, Wes Craven spilled his guts on the past, present and future of, well, Wes Craven. Following the DVD release of his film Red Eye, Craven discussed the difficult choice of making a PG-13 picture. He says, "at the time the swing was towards PG-13; caused by The Ring, The Grudge and all the little Japanese ghost story movies. Suddenly every studio didn’t want to do horror; they want to do PG-13."

So, could Red Eye have taken it up a few notches? According to Craven, "everything that was great about the Red Eye script could be done PG-13 anyway, so I didn’t mind having a broader audience rather than a narrower one. When asked whether or not there was an R-rated or "uncut" version of Red Eye out there somewhere, Craven insisted there wasn't and that everything shot was used. However, he did discuss a possible Red Eye sequel which is, potentially, in the works, but could disappear if Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy chose to pass. When it comes to the sequel's plot, Craven thought it would be "fascinating to have something like Rippner (Murphy's character) being held hostage by the government and needing her (McAdams' character) help for some reason."

He also expressed some concern over the little Project Greenlight film gone MIA, Feast. "I just heard yesterday from my producer, Marianne [Maddalena,] that they had pulled it from release, which is very disappointing." He goes on to explain that The Weinstein Company kind of has its head up its own ass at the moment (using my own words here) and he's hoping some release funds show up soon because it's a fun film. Click on the read link below for the entire interview in which Craven also talks about The Hills Have Eyes remake, an HBO film, a Wait Until Dark remake and the obscure possibility of a Scream 4.

[via AICN]