News

Wildling Pictures has launched a new TV division focusing high-end drama, kids, YA and family content.

The Toronto-based production company, whose feature film output includes Iris Apatow starrer “Young Wether” and David Bowie biopic “Stardust,” have unveiled their first scripted TV slate as part of the expansion.

Highlights include screen adaptations of novels “A Death at The Party” by Amy Stuart and “Clara Voyant” by Rachelle Delaney.

In “A Death at The Party” protagonist Nadine is in the middle of throwing a garden party when she finds herself face to face with a dead body in the basement. She soon embarks on a hunt for the truth. Screenwriter Joanne Sarazen (“Tammy’s Always Dying”) will adapt the novel into a series.

Delaney’s “Clara Voyant” is a coming-of-age about wannabe journalist and astrologer Clara, who is crushed when her student newspaper assigns her the horoscopes beat… until she realizes that she is actually clairvoyant.

A sense of dread permeates every frame of Disappearance at Clifton Hill, a noir type tale that evokes an hypnotic mood from start to finish. Now, this isn’t your traditional film noir, trafficking in cliches and men gritting their teeth. No, this has a female centric true north, making the investigator/protagonist a woman, and it pays dividends. Whenever you can upend a genre, even in a small way, it matters. Plus, when you have a high quality lead performance to latch on to, that helps as well. Hitting theaters this weekend, the movie is an independent effort that has large ambitions. To its credit, they mostly pay off. The film is a mystery/thriller, though largely content to be a character based drama with ominous moments. After an intense prologue, we move to the present day. Returning to her Niagara Falls hometown after the death of her mother,...

Decades after witnessing a disturbing abduction among the trees of Niagara Falls, a woman discovers that there are still troubling things afoot in her hometown in Disappearance at Clifton Hill. Following its well-received run on the festival circuit, Disappearance at Clifton Hill is coming to theaters and VOD on February 28th from IFC Midnight, and ahead of its release, we caught up with director/co-writer Albert Shin in our latest Q&a feature to discuss the film's real-life roots, filming in Niagara Falls, and working with the legendary David Cronenberg, who plays Walter in the movie.

Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us, and congratulations on Disappearance at Clifton Hill! I understand that this movie has real-life roots for you. How and when did you get the idea for this film?

Albert Shin: Thanks, excited to chat with Daily Dead! Not to spoil anything, but the prologue...

Verve has signed Albert Shin, the director of the buzzy new thriller “Disappearance at Clifton Hill,” Variety has learned.

Distribution rights for the film were recently acquired by IFC Midnight and the movie is expected to open in February. “Disappearance at Clifton Hill” debuted at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. It centers on a troubled young woman who returns to her hometown of Niagara Falls after the death of her mother only to be haunted by the memory of a long-ago kidnapping she believes she witnessed. The film stars Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, and also boasts a rare acting appearance by “Eastern Promises” auteur David Cronenberg. Shin co-wrote the script with James Schultz.

Shin previously wrote, directed and produced “In Her Place,” the story of a teenager who becomes pregnant and considers putting her child up for a secret adoption. “In Her Place” also premiered at the Toronto...

If you’ve grown up on the American side of Niagara Falls, Clifton Hill means two things. The Ontario tourist destination is an enjoyably garish bit of Las Vegas lite–Ferris wheels, wax museums, casinos. And it’s also the must-visit for 19-year-old Americans looking to drink legally. Director Albert Shin’s Clifton Hill is an intriguing cocktail of secrets, lies, run-down motels, flashing lights, and glitzy entertainment with a dark underbelly. In other words, the Hill’s moment in the spotlight is also some rather devastating PR for Niagara Falls upon the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It is important to note, however, that Shin’s film is set during the off-season, a chilly stretch of time in which the number of visitors decreases. Most of the locations visited by Abby, deftly played by Tuppence Middleton, are lonely, somber, and cold. Shin sets this tone from the opening scenes.