Professional wrestler Bray Wyatt (a.k.a. The Fiend, a.k.a. Windham Rotunda) was released from his WWE contract in July, but during his time wrestling for the company he met special effects artist Jason Baker – and now Wyatt and Baker are teaming up to make a horror film together. Speaking with Metro, Baker said,
We’re starting a film at the end of the month. Two weeks to go, we’re filming in Tennessee. It’s a feature film and it’s something really new and different. I’d say probably the best way to describe it is Ichi the Killer meets Xanadu.”
If you’re not familiar with director Takashi Miike’s 2001 film Ichi the Killer, here’s a synopsis:
A sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer comes across a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain the enforcer can only dream about.
As for Robert Greenwald’s 1980 musical fantasy Xanadu,
Struggling artist Sonny Malone is trapped in a dull job painting album covers. He is instantly attracted to Kira, an anonymous woman randomly photographed in the background of one of his assignments, but no one is able to identify her. Visiting the auditorium where the cover was shot, Sonny finds the mysterious beauty, an ageless Greek muse, who encourages him to team up with old-fashioned Danny McGuire to build a roller-skating disco.
That would be quite a mixture, and it will be interesting to see why Baker thinks his collaboration with Wyatt could be compared to those two movies. The title and story of the Baker/Wyatt film are being kept under wraps for now, but Baker said Wyatt’s character in the film will be “completely different” from his wrestling personas.
We’re not using any of that – we’re going in a completely different direction, a whole new thing. It should be fun. Hopefully fans of horror and fans of Windham like it!”
This movie will mark Baker’s feature directorial debut. Baker frequently collaborates with Tom Savini; last year they teamed up to sell Jason Voorhees-style PPE masks, and they also made the masks worn by Ethan Hawke for Scott Derrickson’s upcoming Joe Hill adaptation The Black Phone.
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