Boyd Holbrook—the new lead of The Predator?
As the local weather turns moody, the theme for this week’s roundup of productions in Vancouver have turned equally dark and mysterious as we rapidly head towards All Hallows’ Eve at the end of the month.
From an action-horror blockbuster that has an air of mystery about it to several TV pilots with supernatural elements, this collection of productions all share a common thread of darkness and frightful delights.
Read on—if you dare.
To start things off, although The Predator was scheduled to launch into production today (October 17) and slated to continue shooting until February 8, it’s a project that has some mystique surrounding it.
He’s ba-ack…
The film is intended to be a sequel in the series started with the 1987 action-horror flick Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
However, while Benicio Del Toro was reported to be in talks to play the lead, he was reported last week to have dropped out of negotiations.
Boyd Holbrook
Boyd Holbrook, who starred in the Netflix drug-cartel crime drama Narcos about Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, is reported to be in talks to replace Del Toro.
Holbrook may not be as a familiar name to audiences as Del Toro but he has previously starred in Milk, The Skeleton Twins, Gone Girl, and Morgan, and he will also star in the forthcoming Wolverine instalment Logan.
The storyline of The Predator is still being kept heavily under wraps, with few details revealed, so there’s still a lot of this production that’s shrouded in mystery.
Dominic Monaghan will star in A Midsummer’s Nightmare.
But speaking of things mysterious, the TV pilot for the psychological thriller A Midsummer’s Nightmare starts up on November 1, and wraps up on November 18.
It’s based on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream but recast in contemporary times—with some dark twists.
Four young people take off into the woods on a summer romantic escapade.
But their little jaunt takes an unexpected turn when they become stranded and face off against mysterious forces that zero in on them, and use their darkest fantasies and secrets against them.
Among the cast is Dominic Monaghan, of Lost and Lord of the Rings fame, who will play the show’s equivalent of Puck.
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz starred in the 2010 film Let Me In.
Meanwhile, another dark-toned TV pilot, Let the Right One In, starts on October 21 and continues until November 10.
If the title sounds familiar, that’s because it’s based on the 2004 Swedish romance-horror novel of the same name by author John Ajvide Lindqvist.
It was adapted into a 2008 Swedish feature film directed by Tomas Alfredson as well as an American-British version in 2010 entitled Let Me In, starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz.
In the story, a lonely 12-year-old boy, bullied by classmates, develops a close friendship with a peculiar pale girl, who is in fact a vampire.
Fola Evans-Akingbola stars in The Deep
On the topic of both TV pilots and supernatural creatures, The Deep wraps up on Friday (October 21), after having started on September 30.
This show is about mermaids, but not the cute kind that you saw singing rousing and cheerful songs in Disney films.
No, in this thriller-drama set in the coastal town of Bristol Cove, a war breaks out between humans and mermaids as the two species fight over the right to the oceans.
Alex Roe
The cast includes Alex Roe, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Eline Powell, Ian Verdun, and Rena Owen.
Roe and Evans-Akingbola star as a marine biologists who meet a strange new girl (Powell) who has some dark secrets that a fisherman (Verdun) seeks to reveal.
Well, that pretty much fills up our city to the brim with things that go bump in the night. Best of luck catching sight of them—whether you want to or not—while you’re out and about in Hollywood North. Or should we say Hollywood Goth?
