James Gunn – the writer/director of the hugely entertaining B-horror, Slither – has apparently settled on his next project. And it doesn’t appear to be the ultra-violent thriller, The Belcoo Experiment, in which 83 American ex-pats in Brazil are taken hostage in a building and forced to do unspeakable things to each other.
Instead, it seems that he’s plumped for Pets, a sci-fi comedy about a man who is abducted by aliens keen to turn him into their very own… well, the clue’s in the title.
The project has been set up at New Regency, with Red Hour Films sharing the producing duties between Stuart Cornfeld, Jeremy Kramer and one Ben Stiller.
Now, Stiller’s presence as a producer could be just that – or it could mean that he’s interested in starring, which would truly put Pets on the fast track to big budget-dom. It also makes us wonder if this will have the hard-edged ick factor of Slither, or is it perhaps more family-oriented, given that's where Stiller seems to be taking his career.
We wish Gunn well – it sounds like a fun, if sketchy, premise, and anyone who’s ever happened onto his blog will know that he’s an honest, open and – crucially – funny writer. And creatively he’s perhaps the only person to survive the debacle of those two Godawful Scooby-Doo movies (which he wrote), having redeemed himself with the screenplay for Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and then, of course, Slither.
As ever, more news when we get it.