It’s been almost two years since Legendary announced that they were taking the original viral video, Faces of Death, and rebooting it. As readers may recall, the cult mondo movie was presented as a real “snuff” movie to viewers in the 1970s and 1980s, despite being entirely fictionalized and fake. Legendary’s revival of the “franchise” has taken a big step forward now with TheWrap bringing word that Stranger Things actor Dacre Montgomery and former Euphoria star Barbie Ferreira have been tapped to star in the movie. Faces of Death is written by Isa Mazzei and directed by Daniel Goldhaber, the pair behind Netflix horror hit CAM.
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In a statement, Mazzei and Goldhaber said: “‘Faces of Death’ was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online.” Susan Montford and Don Murphy of Angry Films will produce the film with Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath. John Burrud, producer on the original Faces of Death, is also attached.
It was previously reported that the new film will take its roots in a very modern issue, and its plot will reportedly “revolve around a female moderator of a YouTube-like website, whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, that stumbles across a group that is recreating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age and age of online misinformation, the question faced is are the murders real or fake?”
Released in 1978, Faces of Death presented itself to audiences as being an actual documentary showing allegedly real footage of gruesome deaths and mutilations, not only of humans but animals as well. The film developed a cult following but also a reputation about its contents and for being a publicly released “snuff film.” In truth, all of the death and carnage seen in the movie is falsified and simply framed as being true, akin to other movies of the era like Cannibal Holocaust.
Legendary has positioned themselves in recent years as a new home for big-budget remakes and revivals though with Faces of Death just the latest they’ve snatched up. Previously it was announced that the company is developing remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Toxic Avenger, Quatermass, and Gundam in addition to their upcoming re-adaptation of Dune.
