Three years ago, Legendary Entertainment’s reimagining of the infamous 1978 box office hit Faces of Death (get it HERE) went into production in Louisiana, with Barbie Ferreira of the HBO series Euphoria, Dacre Montgomery of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Josie Totah of the recent Saved by the Bell revival, Jermaine Fowler of The Blackening, and singer Charli xcx making up the cast. It was a long wait, but the new Faces of Death finally reached theatres last month (you can read our review HERE) – and now, the film has been given a digital release! You can check it out on Amazon’s Prime Video, where it’s available to rent for $19.99 or purchase for $24.99.
The first Faces of Death was about a pathologist exploring gruesome ways to die via footage purportedly culled from around the world. In reality, most of the death scenes were staged, but no matter, the movie had its producers’ desired effect: outrage, revulsion, banning (although not in 52 countries, as hyped by the film’s makers), and, of course, a money-making hit that spawned sequels and imitators. It was written and directed by John Alan Schwartz, who used multiple pseudonyms for several crew jobs on the flick.
Seven sequels followed over the next twenty-one years. Now writer Isa Mazzei and director Daniel Goldhaber (watch our interview with them HERE), the team that brought us the Netflix release Cam, have made the reimagining for Legendary Entertainment and producers Don Murphy and Susan Montford’s company Angry Films.
Mazzei and Goldhaber provided the following statement about their approach to the concept: “Faces of Death was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online.“
When it was first announced that Mazzei and Goldhaber were taking on the project, it was said that their story would center on a female moderator of a YouTube-like website whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, who stumbles across a group that is re-creating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age of online misinformation, the question is: Are the murders real or fake?
Murphy and Montford produced the Faces of Death reimagining with Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath. Rick Benattar served as an executive producer, with Cory Kaplan co-producing. Murphy and Montford had been hoping to make a new version of Faces of Death ever since 2006, and for several years they had J.T. Petty attached to write and direct. They started the development process over from scratch when they hired Mazzei and Goldhaber.
Are you glad to hear that the new Faces of Death has been given a digital release? Let us know by leaving a comment below.