Last week, we dropped news on Michael Bailey Smith returning to star in the sequel to THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake. Also, there were rumours that British director Michael J. Bassett (WILDERNESS) would be at the helm for this one. Well, there’s bad news and sort of good news on the directorial front.
Fangoria reports today that Bassett will not be directing the sequel scripted by Wes and Jonathan Craven. “I met with Wes and they asked me, but I’m into another project and schedules didn’t allow it,” said Bassett, who will be at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival this year, to introduce WILDERNESS. Instead of Bassett, German-born director Martin (60 SECONDS) Weisz will be directing the sequel. Weisz’s main body of work has been with music videos (over 350 of ’em!), but also directed ROHTENBURG with Keri Russell (check out the trailer here). While I can’t say that music video directors always make good movie directors, ROHTENBURG looks creepy enough that losing Bassett won’t be a total loss.
The sequel (which is thankfully not a remake of the original sequel) will centre on a group of National Guard screw-ups, who on their last day of training in the desert come face-to-face with the mutants.