Had things panned out differently, 2017 would have been a year long remembered for horror revivals – for better or worse.
Twice delayed, F. Javier Gutiérrez and Tsutomu Hanabusa’s Rings movie crawled its way onto the big screen back in February and was, quite frankly, dead on arrival. Lionsgate’s Saw: Legacy, meanwhile, (or should that be Jigsaw?) will hope to sidestep those creative pitfalls this October with a dark new chapter in the twisted story of one John Kramer.
And that’s before you even factor in Paramount’s long-in-development Friday the 13th reboot. Not unlike the aforementioned Rings, the Jason Voorhees origin story has been beset with production woes from the get-go – so much so, in fact, that production purportedly shut down earlier this year to lend those writers involved enough time to whip the screenplay into shape.
That brings us to another of 2017’s potential horror pics: Amityville: The Awakening. Franck Khalfoun’s long-brewing thriller has flirted with release dates across 2015 and 2016, before settling on June 30th, 2017. That early summer date looked to have signalled the end of The Awakening‘s troubles, but Deadline has relayed another piece of disappointing if, unsurprising piece of news: Dimension Films and The Weinstein Company have removed Amityville: The Awakening from that June 30th date, and there’s no sign of a new one. Not yet, at least.
Headed up by Bella Thorne, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Cameron Monaghan, Thomas Mann and Kurtwood Smith all star in the spine-chilling horror, and the official logline describes the film as so: “Belle and her family move into a new house, but when strange phenomena begin to occur in the house, Belle begins to suspect her Mother isn’t telling her everything and soon realizes they just moved into the infamous Amityville house.”
So, there you have it; Amityville: The Awakening has been delayed once again. It’s a disconcerting twist to the film’s tortured saga, and it really begs the question: Will Franck Khalfoun’s horror pic ever see the light of day?