Elijah Wood really likes horror and thriller movies. The actor has been making a big play into the genre lately, starring in the “Maniac” remake, leading the ticking clock race in “Grand Piano,” launching his own production company specializing in scares, and signing up to star in the horror flick “Cooties.” And now he’s jumping into genre waters once again.
Wood will star in and produce acclaimed “Timecrimes” and “Extraterrestrial” director Nacho Vigalondo‘s English-language feature debut, “Open Windows.” Lensing is already underway on the project, which boasts a pretty dodgy concept. The real-time thriller unfolds “on the screen of a laptop connected to the Internet” (oof) with Wood playing a man who is trying to track down his actress girlfriend who has been abducted by somebody named Chord. So, “Skypefall“? Anyway, former porn star Sasha Grey will play the woman in peril, with Neil Maskell as the baddie.
“Instead of simulating a home video camera, we will be representing a computer desktop. The movie screen becomes a computer screen, and the spectator becomes the protagonist of this adventure,” Vigalondo enthused to ScreenDaily while still not managing to sell us on the concept at all. Basically, it sounds like something that got greenlit mostly because the budget is probably next to nothing. Comparisons to “Blow Out” and other ’70s paranoid thrillers are being tossed around, but we’ll believe it when we see it.
With cameras already rolling, this will probably be on the festival circuit something next year.