Cabin in the Woods Star Drops a Hint

Posted by Bryan in Latest News, Movies on April 9th, 2010

Details surrounding the new Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard horror flick, The Cabin in the Woods, have been notoriously hard to come by. The most that the filmmakers have been willing to divulge is that the film represents an unusual twist on the familiar horror format.

Unfortunately, the wait to finally gain some insight into the film was achingly prolonged when distributors announced that its February 2010 release date would be pushed back a full year in order to upscale the film to the 3-D format. Thankfully, although its creators have been mum about plot specifications, actors always love to talk. One of the film’s stars, Amy Acker (Angel, Alias), let slip at this past weekend’s WonderCon in San Fransisco that Cabin in the Woods is a creature feature.

Reported by SciFi Wire, the actress was quoted as saying, “There’s a lot of scary monsters,” in a group interview while promoting the upcoming ABC series, Happy Town. “It’s a scary movie.”

So while that doesn’t give you a whole ton to go on, it at least introduces an intriguing new element. More monsters can never be a bad thing. In other good news, Acker also revealed that the film production process has officially finished, leaving only the 3-D conversion to go.

“I got an e-mail yesterday that it was finished,” Acker said. “The cut is finished, so they’ve got it all, well, ‘in the can’ I guess is what the terminology was.”

While Acker hasn’t seen the cut yet, her showrunners at Happy Town apparently have. “These guys are all friends with Drew from Alias, and they saw it and said that it was awesome,” she said. “So that’s good.”

After letting slip the detail about monsters, Acker chose to play the rest of the interview a bit more coyly. “It is about a cabin in the woods,” Acker confirmed. “You’ve figured it out. Yeah, it’s about a cabin in the woods. It does take from the sort of formula of the horror movie of this group of young kids who go away to a cabin in the woods for the weekend, and everything that happens and what you think is supposed to happen.”

The Cabin in the Woods is due in theaters Jan. 14, 2011.

Creepy Casting

Posted by dominie in Movies on January 21st, 2009

While the details behind the storyline for writer Drew Goddard (Cloverfield) and partner Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods remain very hush-hush, the first official casting news was announced today via The Hollywood Reporter.

Richard Jenkins (The Broken) and Bradley Whitford are moving to The Cabin in the Woods. Jenkins is on board and Whitford is in final negotiations to star in the mystery-shrouded MGM/UA horror project written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, who also is directing. Whedon is producing.

Much like Cloverfield, which Goddard scripted, the Cabin story line provides a new twist on a classic scenario — in this case the young-people-stranded-in-the-woods horror trope.

“It’s really just your basic typecasting: When you need two actors to run through the woods in low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford,” Goddard joked. Whedon said the casting signals what kind of movie they are hoping to make. “They’re the first proof that though The Cabin in the Woods is a classic horror film, it isn’t one you’ve seen before.”

While the studio and filmmakers were loath to provide character details, it is understood that Jenkins and Whitford will play white-collar co-workers with a mysterious connection to the cabin.

The UA production is prepping for a spring shoot and will open wide February 5, 2010, with MGM distributing.