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London- and Paris-based production, finance and sales company Film Constellation has added new sales for Cannes Critics’ Week supernatural horror “Animale” by Emma Benestan, ahead of its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest later this month.

“Animale” sold to Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Cis (Nashe Kino), the Czech and Slovak republics (Film Europe), Brazil (Belas Artes), and Indonesia (Falcon Pt), adding to the previously announced territories which include Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy (Plaion), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo), former Yugoslavia (McF Megacom), and Middle East and North Africa (Falcon).

Wild Bunch Distribution will release the film in French theaters nationwide on Nov. 27, with O’Brother releasing in Belgium on Dec. 18.

After its world premiere as closing film of the Cannes Critics’ Week, the film has been selected in some of the world’s foremost genre festivals including Fantastic Fest, Sitges Film Festival, MOTELx, and Neuchâtel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival to name a few.

The Evil Dead continues to rise! Following the success of Lee Cronin's splatter-filled Evil Dead Rise last year, the pipeline for the comedy horror franchise Sam Raimi built has just gotten busier and busier. Already on the way are two new Evil Dead movies, one from Vermin director Sébastien Vaniček and another from Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop In Yuma County). Now, as revealed by Ash Williams himself Mr Bruce Campbell in an interview with EW, the parasitic soul-snaffling Deadites are set to be drawn to life — or at least more undeath — anew in an original animated TV take on the series.

Speaking to EW ahead of the release of his Satanic Panic set Peacock series Hysteria, Campbell confirmed that whilst he officially retired from the role of supermarket clerk-turned-Promised One Ash Williams in live-action when Ash Vs Evil Dead ended in 2018, he will lend his voice to a new Evil Dead animation.

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a tried and true, serious-in-tone creature feature, or at least one in which the creature in question is a real-world animal and not a fictitious monster. This sub-genre often finds its roots planted firmly in horror comedy or, intentionally or not, camp. So it’s refreshing that Infested (formerly titled Vermin), Sébastien Vaniček‘s feature directorial debut, takes a deathly serious approach to the material. There’s still plenty of fun to be had with these spiders, but there’s nothing funny about them.

30-year-old Kaleb (Théo Christine) is a small-time grifter with a passion for small critters. His hopes of opening a reptile zoo with his friend Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield) were squashed years ago when an argument drove the two friends apart. Kaleb makes up for his lost dream by lining the walls of his room with vivariums filled with creepy-crawlies.

Looking to replicate the success of last year's Evil Dead Rise (directed by Lee Cronin), franchise overseers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert are hiring another filmmaker to head off in a different direction with a fresh spin-off. Up-and-coming director Sébastien Vaniček has been hired to make a new movie for Ghost House Pictures.

According to Deadline, the new film's story is being kept under wraps. And the spin-off nature means that this doesn't remove the possibility that Cronin will go on to make a Rise sequel (he has ideas for where it can lead), it simply represents Raimi and Tapert finding more talent to usher in other movies featuring those terrifying Deadites.

Vaniček, who scored some notice thanks to his work in the short film world, really stepped up with French horror Vermin ,(Aka Infested) which sees an apartment building overrun with deadly spiders. It first introduced as part of...

Charades has closed multiple deals on “There’s Something in the Barn,” Magnus Martens’s (“Fear the Walking Dead”) comedy horror movie from “Dead Snow” producers at 74 Entertainment and XYZ Films.

The English-language movie is headlined by Martin Starr, Amrita Acharia (“Game of Thrones”) and Jeppe Beck Laursen (“The Last Kingdom”). Both Starr and Acharia previously starred in “Dead Snow 2.” The film follows the Nordheim family who have happily moved to their old family farm in the Norwegian Mountain. They lives turn into hell and torments when they come across the trickiest Nordic folklore creatures known as the Barn Elf.

Ahead of its world premiere at Sitges and Fantastic Fest, “There’s Something in the Barn” has been pre-sold by Charades to a raft of major territories, including Germany (Telepool & Capelight), Spain (A Contracorriente) UK (Vertigo Releasing), Switzerland (Telepool), Portugal (Cinemundo), Scandinavia, Hungary (Ads), Czech Rep & Slovakia (Aqs), Romania (Ads...

Timm Kröger’s feature debut title is being sold by Paris-based sales outfit Charades.

Picturehouse Entertainment has taken UK and Ireland rights for Timm Kröger’s Venice competition title The Theory Of Everything from Paris-based sales outfit Charades.

German director Kröger’s black-and-white metaphysical noir is set in the Swiss Alps in the winter of 1962. It centres on a young doctor-to-be attending an international convention where he finds a mysterious pianist, a bizarre cloud formation in the sky and a dark, booming secret under the mountain, all part of the titular “theory of everything.”

The genre-hopping film is produced by Germany’s ma.

The Spider’s Stratagem: Vanicek Weaves Familiar Web with Debut Creature Feature

Creature features have an odd way of satisfying a variety of our escapist desires, often balancing a sense of kitsch while also courting innate primordial fears about creepy crawlies or predatory critters. There’s a certain sense of seduction often innate to these kinds of stories, challenging our sense of curiosity, sending us back to a nostalgic sense of wonder through mainlining dread both potent and primitive. Sébastien Vanicek’s debut Vermin doesn’t quite manage to succeed in either tapping into these fears or managing to entertain, taking itself rather seriously but without providing the necessary gravitas to relate vicariously to a handful of characters plagued by a newly discovered species of viciously venomous arachnids.…...

Director Sébastien Vanicek’s debut feature Infested, a spider-filled French thriller that was formerly known as Vermin (which I feel is a better title than the overused Infested), is set to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, then it will be heading over to Fantastic Fest. But before it starts making the festival rounds, it has already secured distribution through the Shudder streaming service! Shudder is planning to release the film in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand sometime in 2024.

Scripted by Vanicek and Florent Bernard, Infested has the following synopsis: Kaleb is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over a matter of inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a bazaar and brings it back to his flat. It only takes a...

Arachnophobes beware, you’re in for a scare with new Shudder acquisition Infested, previously titled Vermin.

Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thrillers and the supernatural, announced today it has acquired North American, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand rights to Charades and Wtf Films’ thriller Infested ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

In the film, “Kaleb is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over a matter of inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a bazaar and brings it back to his flat. It only takes a moment for it to escape and reproduce, turning the whole place into a dreadful web trap. At the same time, the police lock down the building where the residents are ambushed. Only option for Kaleb...

Timm Kröger’s second film is a German-language psychological thriller.

Charades and Anonymous Content are partnering on sales for German director Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything ahead of its world premiere in competition in Venice, announced today.

The genre-blending black and white thriller set in the world of quantum mechanics is Kroger’s second feature. Set in the Swiss Alps, it is about a physicist attending an international convention where an Iranian scientist plans to unveil a groundbreaking new theory in quantum mechanics. Intrigued by a mysterious jazz pianist who seems to know intimate details about him, he...

Two UK features play in competition at event’s 38th edition.

Venice Critics’ Week has selected seven features for its main competition, including two from the UK - Hoard by Luna Carmoon and Sky Peals by Moin Hussain.

Scroll down for full line-up

Hoard is the debut feature from Carmoon, a Screen Star of Tomorrow 2022,. It is produced by Loran Dunn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2017), Helen Simmons (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) with Andy Starke, and stars Hayley Squires, Joseph Quinn (Screen Star of Tomorrow 2018) and Saura Lightfoot Leon.

Hoard is backed by the BFI and BBC Film, which also supported development,...

“God Is a Woman,” a doc by Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot about Pierre Dominique Gaisseau’s 1975 journey to Panama to make a film on the island-dwelling Kuna people — whose women play a unique and sacred role — will open the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week.

The section’s out-of-competition opener reconstructs the legend of this film that was passed down from the elders to the new Kuna generation, but never made it to the screen. Gaisseau, a French explorer and filmmaker who won an Oscar in 1961 for the doc “The Sky Above, the Mud Below,” lived with the Kuna people on a Panamanian island for a year and filmed their most intimate ceremonies. He then promised to return with the film, but never did. He ran out of funding and a bank confiscated his reels, which Peyrot unearthed 50 years later.

Films in the Venice Critics’ Week competition comprise “About Last Year,...

Venice Critics’ Week has announced the line-up for its 38th edition, running August 30 to September 9 alongside the Venice Film Festival.

The seven competition titles include UK director Moin Hussain’s debut feature Sky Peals about a lonely man working the night shifts at a motorway service station with little human contact or connection. Upon hearing that his estranged father has died, Adam finds himself piecing together a complicated image of a man that he never really knew and uncovers details of his life that he struggles to comprehend.

Taiwanese actor Lee Hong-Chi’s will also unveil his directorial debut Love Is A Gun about a petty criminal whose attempts to build a quiet life following his release from prison are upended by the reappearance of his former boss, his debt-ridden mother and an old friend.

The competition titles will compete for the €5,000 Grand Prize and the €3,000 Audience Award. The selection...

Exclusive: Paris-based WTFilms has acquired international sales rights for thriller Hood Witch, the debut film of rising French director Saïd Belktibia, starring Golshifteh Farahani and Denis Lavant.

Iranian-French actress and activist Farahani (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No) plays a woman who makes a living smuggling exotic animals and illicit products.

She branches out with the creation of a mobile App that connects clients with mystical marabout healers, but when a user’s consultation takes a tragic turn she finds her facing a violent backlash that could cost her and her son their lives.

The thriller is produced by Iconoclast and Les Misérables director Lady Ly’s Lyly Films.

Iconoclast’s recent credits include Romain Gavras’s Netflix original Athena, which debuted in Venice last year. The company is in Cannes this year as a producer on the Midnight Screening title The King Of Algiers.

“Saïd Belktibia is...

Paris-based sales company will also bring Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case to the market.

Paris-based Charades has boarded a slew of starry Cannes titles including Mona Achache’s just-announced Special Screening film Little Girl Blue starring Marion Cotillard and Directors’ Fortnight opener The Goldman Case.

The company is also selling Kamal Lazraq’s Hounds premiering in Un Certain Regard, Katell Quillévéré’s Along Came Love set for a Cannes Premiere screening and Chicken For Linda! selected for parallel section Acid, plus will unveil first images from new acquisition Sébastien Vanicek’s Vermin.

Little Girl Blue is inspired by the life of Achache’s mother.

Computer-generated spiders need not apply for the job of starring in Vermin, an upcoming horror movie from Charades and WTFilms that will feature Real Spiders, Variety reports.

Sébastien Vaniček is directing Vermin, which is set in the French projects.

In the film, “An underprivileged suburb has been thrown into chaos following an invasion of venomous spiders. Ordered to be placed in quarantine, the project sees inhabitants living on lockdown alongside terrifying spiders that are becoming bigger and bigger.

“The story revolves around Kaleb, who’s about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over a matter of inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Passionate about exotic animals, he comes home one day with a venomous spider and accidentally let it slip away.”

Théo Christine (“Suprêmes”), Finnegan Oldfield (“Final Cut”), Jérôme Niel (“Smoking Causes Coughing”), Sofia Lesaffre (“Les Misérables”) and Lisa Nyarko star.

Charades and WTFilms have teamed on “Vermin,” a horror movie set in the French projects with a cast of local up-and-coming actors, who star alongside real spiders.

The movie will mark the feature debut of Sébastien Vaniček, who previously directed critically acclaimed shorts such as “Mayday.” Harry Tordjman at My Box Films is producing.

“Vermin” stars Théo Christine (“Suprêmes”), Finnegan Oldfield (“Final Cut”), Jérôme Niel (“Smoking Causes Coughing”), Sofia Lesaffre (“Les Misérables”) and Lisa Nyarko.

The film is currently in shooting in Paris, with a March 3 end date. It will distributed in France by Tandem. France Télévisions pre-bought the movie and Netflix got the pay TV window in France.

“Vermin” is set in an underprivileged suburb that has been thrown into chaos following an invasion of venomous spiders. Ordered to be placed in quarantine, the project sees inhabitants living on lockdown alongside terrifying spiders that are becoming bigger and bigger.

While Nintendo fans won’t be getting that Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel in time for the 35th anniversary of the iconic fantasy series, the publisher is celebrating the huge milestone in a different way: a new Game & Watch handheld pre-loaded three classic Zelda games. Following up on the success of the Super Mario Bros. version of the classic handheld line, the Zelda Game and Watch is hitting store stores on Dec. 11 and will cost $49.99.

You can check out the cool design of the device in the photo above!

If you want to be the first to get the Zelda Game and Watch, you’ll want to make sure to get your pre-order in Asap as soon as the handheld goes on sale. As you all know, Nintendo products tend to sell out before they even hit shelves! And as the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 pre-order periods showed us,...