The Unholy Gets A Release Date

Sony’s Screen Gems has announced that their upcoming PG-13 horror movie The Unholy (previously titled Shrine) will be released into theaters on April 2nd of this year according to a report by Deadline. The project originally began filming just over a year ago and was forced to stop due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns that went into a effect in March of 2020, it’s unclear when they were able to resume filming but it would appear a completed movie is on the way at the very least. Naturally there’s not a lot of competition at the box office for the film but it will debut on the same weekend as Warner Bros and Legendary’s upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong (premiering on Wednesday, March 31).

Directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos, the film is based on the novel Shrine by James Herbert and is officially described as follows: “The Unholy follows Alice, a young hearing-impaired girl who, after a supposed visitation from the Virgin Mary, is inexplicably able to hear, speak and heal the sick. As word spreads and people from near and far flock to witness her miracles, a disgraced journalist (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hoping to revive his career visits the small New England town to investigate. When terrifying events begin to happen all around, he starts to question if these phenomena are the works of the Virgin Mary or something much more sinister.”

Evil Dead co-creators Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert produced the film alongside Spiliotopoulos. The film’s fast includes Katie Aselton, William Sadler, Cricket Brown, with Diogo Morgado and Cary Elwes. Fast and Furious franchise star Jordana Brewster was originally attached to appear but Aselton replaced her ahead of the production start.

The Unholy marks Spiliotopoulos directorial debut but just the latest entry in his already extensive career. Early on in his career Spiliotopoulos’ writing for direct-to-video animated movies like The Jungle Book 2, The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata, and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers. He later made the leap to live-action, writing the 2014 Hercules movie starring Dwayne Johnson, and The Huntsman: Winter’s War. The two sides of his career melded in 2017 when he penned the live-action remake of the animated movie Beauty and the Beast. Recently he penned the Charlie’s Angels reboot, and the upcoming Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins and Bright 2.