Like few other modern filmmakers, James Wan has developed a unique and varied filmography that includes films like the revenge-thriller Death Sentence and billion dollar grossers like Aquaman and Furious 7. The director has also made a career out of horror, starting three major franchises in the past fifteen years with Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring. For his next trick, Wan will go back to his roots and bring us a brand new horror-thriller with Malignant, and though the film itself is mostly still a mystery, Wan has lifted the curtain slightly on it.
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Production has been underway on the film for a few weeks now, and to mark the beginning of the end Wan has released the first photo from the set that wasn’t just a slate. Details surrounding the film are currently under wraps, but Wan has previously revealed that the project is a new, totally original project and has no connections to an earlier project he was developing with a similar title. Based on this new photo from the set, we can perhaps speculate that the film has something to do with
It will star Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White, Jake Abel, Jacqueline McKenzie and Ingrid Bisu. Bisu co-wrote and executive produced the film with Wan, and other producers include Wan’s Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear.
Malignant will mark Wan’s next project before returning to the DC Extended Universe, with Aquaman 2 set to be released in 2022.
“It won’t be Aquaman 2 just yet,” Wan said of his next project in an interview earlier this year. “I have something else I’m cooking up; I’m not ready to share just yet.”
While it’s still unclear exactly what story Malignant will tell, the notion that Wan will be crafting a new sort of fictional world is certainly exciting.
“There’s been a bit of speculation as to what my next project is… all I’ll say is, I’m super excited to go back to my indie roots with this hard-R thriller,” Wan said of the project earlier this year. “An original horror idea (not a reboot/remake or anything based on existing IP) with old school, practical effects and no giant, blue screen sets.”
“I mean, liking the people I work with goes a long way,” Wan said in an interview late last year. “That was the reason why I came back when I did Insidious 2. But it’s a weird one for me, because I actually don’t know what I want to do next for the first time in my career. I felt like Aquaman ticked a lot of boxes for me. I want to do another action movie after Furious 7, I wanted to do a world creation film, and I wanted to do a superhero movie, and Aquaman literally ticked all of those boxes for me. And so right now, I’m in that sort of place of like do I kind of go back and do a smaller movie maybe as my next one, something a bit more intimate. Or if I can do a personal movie, but maybe it’s on a bigger scale. I’m not sure at this point.”
Malignant will be released on August 14, 2020.
(H/T Bloody Disgusting)
