It was well over a year ago that word first arrived that Eli Roth was lending his producing powers to a couple of genre flicks: "Clown" based on a fake movie trailer from commercial directors Jon Watts and Christopher D. Ford and "Aftershock," a high-octane horror-thriller set during the aftermath of the February 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake. And then, not much else was heard of since. Well, with buyers now headed to Germany for the Berlin Film Festival, one title already has several interested suitors fighting each other to snag the rights.
Deadline reports that The Weinstein Company and Relativity are among those looking to land the rights to "Aftershock." Set to be an "Eli Roth Presents" movie that will feature the multi-talented man producing, starring and co-writing the film, the story will center on an insane asylum whose inmates are freed during an earthquake. And in the film's biggest WTF gambit, wholesome starlet Selena Gomez is making a cameo appearance in a never ending quest to give her some "edge" (she's also landed a party in Harmony Korine's bonkers "Spring Breakers"). Her role came about because she happened to be in the country for a concert at the time.
Latin-American filmmakers Nicolás López and Guillermo Amoedo co-wrote the film, while the former is directing the movie which is already four weeks into production, and some kind of sizzle reel has spurred this wave of interest. "We are making a smart elevated disaster genre movie with superb production value, something really big. The film’s going to be very scary, very intense, and very real,” Roth told Deadline.
The project is one buyers are hoping will replicate the low cost, decent box office success of "The Last Exorcism," Roth's last producing effort. And on the horizon, he's got a handful more genre pics on the way including the 'Last Exorcism' sequel and RZA's "The Man With The Iron Fists." As for what he'll direct next, Roth last said he's looking to get his sci-fi apocalypse film "Endangered Species" off the ground, but not much has been heard about it in a while.