Updates From ‘Mortal Kombat 2’, ‘War Between the Land and the Sea’, and More

Leslie Odom, Jr. will dance with the devil for a new film. Bryan Fuller talks about accidentally making his “gateway†horror film R-rated. Plus, get a new look at Ryan Murphy’s next horror series, The Beauty. Spoilers, away!

Knock Three Times

Variety reports Jerrold Tarog is attached to direct Knock Three Times, “a psychological horror†filmed based on “Filipino urban folklore, specifically a childhood ritual involving mirrors, candles, and three knocks that serves as the narrative’s foundation.†The story is said to concern “a young woman returning from rehab who discovers her mother has fallen under the influence of a malevolent antique mirror.â€

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Dance with the Devil

Deadline also reports Leslie Odom, Jr., will star in Dance with the Devil, a feature based on a Rolling Stone article recounting Sammy Davis, Jr.’s involvement with the Church of Satan during the filming of Poor Devil, a pilot for an unproduced series concerning a minor demon attempting to win the favor of Satan by harvesting the soul of an accountant hoping to get revenge on his boss.

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Mortal Kombat 2

Speaking with Comic Book, Mortal Kombat 2‘s Lewis Tan suggested the film’s fight scenes will be much gorier than the first, saying that “they really let the action team go crazy†now that the necessary table setting of the story is out of the way.

I think it’s worse. Some of the fatalities and some of the fights are worse. But they are way more detailed and way more complex, which is what I wanted… to step up the level of complexity and depth in the fights. It’s Mortal friggin Kombat. We should have the best fight movie of the year. That has to be the goal. I think we accomplished that. [My character has] one of the most epic fights in the second movie, for sure. The location of the fight and who Cole gets to fight was pretty special.

They really let the action team go crazy in the second one. Whereas in the first one, they were trying to balance the storyline with the fights. In the second one, it’s the tournament. We were already in. We are already sold. The tournament is there. It’s happening, and now we can set up all the different fights everybody wanted to see. And they really gave the action team free rein to run with it, shoot it, and the way it was edited. When you do that, and you have a good team, and you trust them, you get gold. It’s not that they didn’t do that in the first movie, but I think they were just trying to balance too many things, and we learned from those moments.

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Dust Bunny

Appearing as a guest on the Horror Queers podcast (via Bloody-Disgusting), Bryan Fuller discussed his disappointment over Dust Bunny, his new “gateway horror†film intended for a family audience, receiving an “R†rating by the MPAA.

This is an R-rated film. We were stunned, too. The MPAA is notorious about being really hard on independent movies and a little more lax on studio films. There are lawsuits against the MPAA from independent studios over how much stricter they are with independents than they are over studio fare. I mean, M3GAN murdered children and ripped their ears off and slaughtered somebody with a paper cutter, and that was PG-13.

[Dust Bunny has] no nudity. There’s no foul language. You know, it’s a conversation with the MPAA. We got an R rating. They said what put us over the edge was the non-lethal toothbrush injury.

I thought we were making a movie for the whole family, and I definitely wanted it to be a gateway experience where 10-year-olds would see this movie and say, ‘Yes, give me more.‘ That was certainly my experience seeing The Wizard of Oz and having my appetite whetted. And then, seeing Alien when I was 9 years old and seeing Black Christmas when I was seven, and those types of things that I loved. I wasn’t traumatized by them. I was just excited to see people survive their stories.

So there’s something about the strangeness of the MPAA with independent movies, and I thought this was a family film, and so many people who have seen it feel like it’s a family film. I hope it’s a lot of kids’ first R-rated movie that they get to see and experience. I would tell adults, ‘ Look, if you’re on the fence, see it first, and you’ll see that it’s a really fun, rompy movie about a child, who is wonderful in the film and a great heroine and protagonist, that can be aspirational for other children her age in the story.

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Spaceballs 2

Daphne Zuniga has officially wrapped filming on Spaceballs 2.

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Sleepwalker

Hayden Panettiere’s sleepwalking episodes have supernatural origins in the trailer for Sleepwalker, the feature debut of TMNT and Star Wars: Resistance director, Brandon Auman, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way.  Mischa Barton, Beverly D’Angelo, and Justin Chatwin co-star.

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Marsupilami

Elsewhere, a French zookeeper must recapture the titular creature in a new live-action film based on the Belgian comic book and former Disney TV series, Marsupilami.

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The War Between the Land and the Sea

During a recent interview with The Radio Times, Russell T. Davies suggested The War Between the Land and the Sea is better for not having the Doctor in it.

One of the most interesting things you can do with Doctor Who is to take the Doctor out. This is a world without the Doctor, and we’re seeing how we cope as the human race. Normally, the Doctor has a magic blue doorway they can take everybody safely through, that safety net has gone. You very much find these characters up against the wall and pushed to the limit.

It takes on tougher themes, and people have tougher reactions in it, again, because there’s no Doctor. There are monsters, there’s romance, there are chases, there’s gunfights. We didn’t really know much about them before. Essentially, they were monsters on a beach in Portsmouth, or in Sea Base, we didn’t really delve into their culture and their society, and that’s what we’re able to do a lot more of here. You get to see how they live and their environment and all the different species, so that’s been a huge amount of fun to expand the backstory.

There are absolutely Easter eggs to be seen – if you get the pause button ready, you’ll be seeing plenty of stuff.

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The Beauty

Bloody-Disgusting has a few new photos from The Beauty, Ryan Murphy’s new series at FX starring (deep breath) Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, Ashton Kutcher, Rebecca Hall, Amelia Gray Hamlin, Ari Graynor, Bella Hadid, Ben Platt, Billy Eichner, Isabella Rossellini, Jessica Alexander, Julie Halston, Lux Pascal, Meghan Trainor, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Peter Gallagher, and Vincent D’Onofrio. More at the link.

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Ghosts

Finally, Spoiler TV has images from “It’s a Wonderful Christmas Carol: Part One,†the December 18 episode of Ghosts. More at the link.

Sam’s big Christmas Eve TV interview with Walter Storm (Larry Wilmore) takes an unexpected turn. Meanwhile, Trevor and Patience bond over their mutual disinterest in celebrating Christmas.

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