The first week of January was supposed to see the theatrical release of AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING, Franck Khalfoun’s reboot of the classic horror franchise. But, as is sometimes the case with a movie being distributed by Dimension/The Weinstein Company, the film was suddenly pulled from its release date and sent into “TBD” purgatory. So what happened?
I just snagged a little update on the project from producer Jason Blum, whose new flick THE LAZARUS EFFECT comes out this weekend. The full interview will hit the site in the next day or so, with plenty of news on what his production company has in the works, but this title was of particular interest to me. Here’s Blum’s statement on the matter:
We’re still in post on it. I’m very, very happy with it. We’re continuing to have conversations with Dimension and Weinstein about how it’s going to come out, but it’s definitely going to come out. I think people are going to like it, Jennifer Jason Leigh is great in the movie. I’m hoping to do another movie with Franck. I’m really pleased with it, my guess is we’ll announce when it’ll come out sometime in the next twelve months.”
I then asked if he had any conflicts with The Weinstein Company over the cut of the film; this is how Blum responded:
Like a lot of the movies that we do, we’re just tinkering with it and trying to make it better. We’re pretty close now. We went back and forth over the cut of the movie, which we’re happy with now. We’re just tinkering with the movie in post-production.”
So then, a lot of tinkering is in effect; clearly AMITYVILLE is still under construction. Obviously at the moment the film doesn’t have a release date, but based on Blum’s word, we should be hearing something within the year. Let’s hope it’s worth the wait.