News

Killer hogs will be unleashed in the upcoming survival horror movie Feral, coming soon from Australian director Jesse O’Brien (Two Heads Creek) and currently in pre-production.

Caitlin Stasey and Dougray Scott star in the upcoming creature feature.

In Feral…

“Stranded on a remote highway, a father and his estranged daughter struggle to survive against a pack of merciless feral hogs that begin hunting them in the middle of a state-wide dust storm.”

Addam Bramich and George S. Mahaffrey wrote the screenplay.

Altitude Films is handling sales on Feral.

In addition to his work as a director, Jesse O’Brien is also a visual effects artist who most recently worked as a visual effects coordinator on the high concept dinosaur movie 65. He also worked on Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing.

The post ‘Feral’ – Caitlin Stasey Starring in Australian Horror Movie About Wild Hogs...

A snappily written Brit/Aussie co-production that happily juggles the humour of both cultures, Two Heads Creek is a fun frolic of a lightweight horror, pitching itself as a slightly rosier spin on the black comedy of Severance and The Cottage. And while it might not quite prove to be as laugh-out-loud memorable as either of the above, some well-placed heart and a focus on family helps to keep things sunny enough to weather the cringier stretches.

Things kick off in a decidedly racist post-Brexit Britain, with mismatched twins Annabelle (Kathryn Wilder) and Norman (Jordan Waller – who also wrote the script) cutting ties from their apparently false Polish routes, following the death of their adoptive mother. Craving more from their stunted lives (as a failed actor and struggling butcher respectively), the pair head Down Under in search of their long-lost birth mother, only to wash up in the off-grid Two...

Ahead of the UK premiere of Two Heads Creek, a playfully dark cannibal horror comedy, director Jesse O’Brien talks about the joys of cannibal karaoke, tackling immigration issues and filming in a haunted hotel.

How did Jordan Waller’s Two Heads Creek script end up in your hands and did you see it as more a family comedy than a cannibal gore-fest?

Producer Judd Tilyard and I were developing one of my own scripts, Inherit the Earth, which we thought would take a while to finance – and during that process he asked if I’d like to take a look at another script, which was then called Flesh and Blood. I read it with a sense of hesitation. Did I want my second film to be a cannibal horror comedy set in the outback? But from page one, Jordan Waller’s writing really leaped off the page. I knew immediately...

The UK’s most popular horror and fantasy film festival celebrates its 21st bloody year with a special Digital edition, showcasing twenty-five films, from Thursday 27th August to Monday 31st August, including seven world premieres and sixteen UK premieres! Ten countries are represented from four continents in a deadly, daring and diverse programme exclusively presented to UK audiences.

Passes and tickets will go on sale Saturday 1st August and details on how to access the event and choose which films to watch are on the FrightFest website – www.frightfest.co.uk. All film screenings will be geo-locked to UK audiences and only accessible from within the United Kingdom.

From the press release:

The menu of sinister treats and gory delights kicks off on the Thursday night with a Live Streamed Quiz, hosted by Mike Muncer, host and producer of ‘Evolution of Horror’ – the UK’s #1 horror movie podcast. Mike will...

‘Sky Sharks’ to open horror and fantasy film festival.

Seven world premieres will screen as part of the UK’s Frightfest virtual edition running from August 27-31.

A total of 25 films have been selected for the horror and fantasy film festival. All virtual screenings will be geo-locked to UK audiences, which means the London-based festival will be accessible nationwide for the first time.

Frightfest is also planning a physical event for October which will feature an entirely different line-up.

Now in its 21st year, Frightfest 2020 will open with the UK premiere of Marc Fehse’s Sky Sharks, in which flying...

FrightFest, the UK horror festival that was forced to move online this year because of pandemic disruption, has unveiled a lineup for its 21st edition (August 27-31) including seven world premieres.

The event opens with the UK premiere of Sky Sharks, which features Nazi zombie-piloted airborne killer sharks.

World premieres include Logan Thomas’s There’s No Such Thing As Vampires, Patrick Rea’s I Am Lisa, Ruben Pla’s The Horror Crowd, G-Hey Kim’s Don’t Click, Toby Watts’ Playhouse, Airell Anthony Hayles and Sam Casserly’s They’re Outside, and Francesco Giannini’s Hall.

Industry-focused events will include a panel hosted by Den Of Geek’s UK editor Rosie Fletcher about how the horror genre has been affected by the pandemic.

All online film screenings will be geo-locked to UK audiences and available through FrightFest’s website.

“We will desperately miss seeing all of you in person...

The Australian Writers’ Guild (Awg) has opened applications for the 2020 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing.

Funded by a bequest from the late film critic John Hinde, the prize offers $10,000 for the best produced script and professional support to the best unproduced script.

Entries may be science-fiction feature film, television series or miniseries, web series, audio, animation, children’s television, or interactive media.

Both scripts receive entry to the Awg’s Pathway Program. The unproduced winner will have an experienced genre producer read their work, and be set up with a meeting with an industry professional, hand-selected for their particular script.

Past winners in the produced category include Lucas Taylor’s Eleven Eleven in 2019, the late Cris Jones’ feature The Death and Life of Otto Bloom in 2017, episode five of Cleverman by Michael Miller in 2016, and Jesse O’Brien’s feature film Arrowhead in 2015.

Past unproduced winners include C.S. McMullen’s Awake,...

Stars: Kerry Armstrong, Kathryn Wilder, Gary Sweet, Stephen Hunter, Jordan Waller, Kevin Harrington, Don Bridges, Helen Dallimore, Madekaine Nunn, Anna Tolputt, Danxia Yang, Rob Sheean, David Adlam, Kasha Bajor | Written by Jordan Waller | Directed by Jesse O’Brien

After the death of their adoptive mother, shy butcher Norman and his drama queen twin sister Annabelle leave the UK and adventure to Australia in search of their biological mother, but the local townsfolk of Two Heads Creek are hiding a dark secret… but aren’t they all when it comes to small towns in horror movies?

Australia and New Zealand have a fine tradition of mixing comedy and horror to superb effect. Be it the early work of Peter Jackson such as Bad Taste and Brain Dead, or more recent efforts such as Primal and The Loved Ones, horror from down under always seems to walk a very fine line be laughs and scares,...

Two Heads Creek is a horror comedy from the minds of Jesse O'Brien (Alien Arrival) and Jordan Waller. In the film, a brother and sister search for the birthplace of their biological mother. Leaving the United Kingdom behind for Australia, these siblings find something strange - in the Outback. Two Heads Creek had its World Premiere in October of 2019, at Monster Fest. Now, this title has been picked up by the Horror Collective for a future U.S. release (Deadline). Starring Kathryn Wilder ("Frontier"), Jordan Waller and Helen Dallimore, a trailer for the film is available here, along with the U.S. artwork. Director O'Brien has talked about the film at a few festivals. He introduces the film as "irreverent, kooky, quirky, horror-comedy, very much more comedy than horror (Supanova)." A lot of that comedy comes from the interactions between characters Norman (Waller) and Annabelle (Wilder). O'Brien also mentions the...

Exclusive: Shaked Berenson and Jonathan Barkan’s genre distribution label The Horror Collective has acquired the North American distribution rights to the Jesse O’Brien-directed horror-comedy Two Heads Creek. The pic is slated for a summer release.

Written by Jordan Waller, who also stars in the UK-Australian film alongside Kathryn Wilder, Two Heads Creek follows a timid butcher and his drama-queen twin sister as they venture off to Australia in search of their birth mother. While there, they are among seemingly tolerant townsfolk but little do they know, they are hiding a dark, meaty secret.

More from DeadlineShaked Berenson And Jonathan Barkan Launch Genre Distro Label The Horror CollectiveSydney Film Festival Cancelled Over CoronavirusChina Moviegoing Survey Reveals 62% Of People Will Wait For Complete Covid-19 Containment Before Returning To Cinemas

“Making Two Heads Creek was a horror fan’s dream,...

‘Judy & Punch.’

Fox/Chernin Entertainment’s Ford v Ferrari easily retained pole position in another soft weekend at Australian cinemas while Mirrah Foulkes’ writing and directing debut Judy & Punch struggled.

Foulkes’ savage satire starring Damon Herriman and Mia Wasikowska as husband-and-wife puppeteers in an anarchic world has garnered a 79 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes since the world premiere at Sundance.

But critical acclaim often doesn’t reflect cinemagoers’ tastes, particularly for niche titles which are as challenging and dark in tone as this. The Madman Entertainment release fetched $29,000 on 38 screens last weekend and $108,000 with festival screenings.

Cinema Nova’s Natalie Miller says: “I think the title is a bit of a hindrance as people don’t know if it’s a children’s film and would find it quite different and confronting, despite great acting.”

Produced by Michele Bennett, Blue-Tongue Films’ Nash Edgerton and Vice Media Australia’s Danny Gabai,...

Jordan Waller in ‘Two Heads Creek.’

Producers Brett Thornquest, Steven Matusko and Mat Graham have launched Entertainment Advocate, an Australian distribution company with the aim of handling a limited number of Oz, Us and UK titles each year.

The banner’s debut release, Two Heads Creek, a macabre, irreverent horror comedy directed by Jesse O’Brien, opened last weekend after premiering at Monster Fest.

While the weekend gross was a modest $14,000 including festival screenings, Matusko, who is partnered with Thornquest in Eclectik Vision, tells If: “We understand the business and will approach distribution with a producer’s mindset rather than a distributor’s.

“We are not looking to outbid larger distribution companies but we want to work with other Australian producers and also to release select films from the UK and Us.”

Graham was one of the producers on Eclectik Vision’s Infini and The Osiris Child, both directed by Shane Abbess.

Cleverman..

Michael Miller, co-writer of the ABC's Cleverman, has won the $10,000 Australian Writers' Guild's 2016 John Hinde Award for Science Fiction.

The annual award, first presented in 2008, is funded by a bequest from the late film critic John Hinde.

The award has two categories: one for a produced script, won by Miller, and one for an unproduced script, which this year was awarded to Graeme Burfoot for his screenplay, Red to Blue..Both were presented their awards at an industry event held at Brisbane Powerhouse on Wednesday evening..

Miller was awarded the prize for episode five of the Cleverman.s first season, .A Man of Vision.. He said sci-fi is a form that allows a writer to convey things not always so easily said in traditional formats.

.That was definitely part of the logic behind setting Cleverman in the future. It's exciting to think that Cleverman is one of several sci-fi-inspired shows on television at present,...

Jesse O'Brien and shuttle on-set.

The seeds of Jesse O'Brien's first feature Arrowhead, releasing VOD June 9, were sown when the director was just eighteen.

O'Brien and Arrowhead DoP Samuel Baulch, the filmmaker's best friend since high school, flew together to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they spent a semester studying film at Compass Academy.

"We flew over there and had the time of our lives making connections", said O'Brien.

"Then a decade later when we made Arrowhead, some of those contacts became producers and flew over and brought their gear because we'd maintained those friendships in the years since".

After Grand Rapids, O'Brien went on to study multimedia at Swinburne, before getting a job at Creswick Creative in South Melbourne.

"They do all the TV spots and ad campaigns for Disney. So I got thrown in the deep end in my first job after uni, learning motion graphics, which is essentially text-flying screens,...

Late last year, we shared a really cool sci-fi short film called Arrowhead: Signal, which followed a mercenary named Kye who crash-lands on a hostile desert planet where he's forced to survive... of course, he's not alone. The idea behind the short was to turn it into a feature film, and according to Jesse O'Brien it is going to be a movie! Earlier it was reported that the movie would be turned into a TV series, but O'Brien reached out to us to tell us that was not correct, and that his vision of the short being a feature film is actually going to be realized which is awesome! I can't wait to see it!

This is the previous news that came from CNET Australia who said that it has "been picked up by Foxtel sci-fi channel Sf for a premiere in 2014." Here's a synopsis for the show:

Arrowhead is...