SLASH DISCUSSES FIRST PROJECTS AS A FILM PRODUCER

So yesterday, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross got an Oscar nomination for their score for The Social Network. I didn’t write anything about it because a) I was too busy fuming that somehow Christopher Nolan didn’t get a Best Director nod for Inception, and b) it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Reznor and Ross would be nominated, so it didn’t really feel like news. Still, it will be great if a few weeks from now we can start referring to the Nine Inch Nails mastermind as “Oscar winning composer Trent Reznor.”

But, no, the much more interesting cinemetal story to break this week is that Slash — who announced the formation of Slasher Films, a production company devoted to creating “edgy contemporary horror fare with a nod to the thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s,” back in October — has now started to discuss his first potential projects as a movie producer. From an interview that Entertainment Weekly conducted with the guitarist at the in-progress Sundance Film Festival:

“We have four really great scripts we’re going to go into production with one right after another. The first one has the tentative title Nothing to Fear, which is going into production this year. It’s a really well-written demon story. It’s basically about a God-fearing Christian family who gets relocated to a small town in Kansas called Stull, which unbenownst to them happens to be one of the seven gateways to hell, and they’ve been lured there for an annual sacrifice [the townfolk] do for the demon that appears every year to satiate his bloodlust — otherwise he goes on a rampage. The ironic thing is that Stull is a real town that has this Internet folklore: It actually is supposed to be one of the gateways to hell, and the Pope won’t fly over it. I looked it up and was blown away. There’s another script called Theorem that’s about a mathematician who figures out the equation for evil and then, of course, there’s the hell that comes along with it. Then there’s another one called Wake the Dead [based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles, author of 30 Days of Night], which is basically a modern, young Frankenstein story about a brilliant college student who’s discovered how to animate dead tissue — but he’s a teenager so he goes overboard. The last one is The Other Kingdom, which is about a big metropolitan hospital where the patients are overcome by an epidemic that turns them into these savage killing zombie types and the staff gets stuck in there with them.”

So, uh, all of these projects sound kinda clichéd, save for Theorem — I can’t recall ever seeing a horror film about a mathematician before (unless you count Darren Aaronofsky’s π as a horror film, which I guess you could). But then, I’ve literally watched twelve Friday the 13th movies, nine A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, ten Halloween films, five Chucky flicks, and four Sleepaway Camp pictures, so I guess innovation isn’t a pre-requisite for enjoyment of the horror genre. So perhaps I should reserve judgment until the films actually get made.

While we wait to see whether or not Slash is the next David O. Selznick (David. O. Slashnick?), you can read the rest of the interview with the artist formerly known as Saul Hudson here.

-AR