Exclusive First Look at Tom Woodruff’s King of Miseries

Steve Barton |

Jun 6, 2013

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Exclusive First Look at Tom Woodruff's King of Miseries You want badass? You’ve GOT badass. Special effects legend and Academy Award-winning creature designer Tom Woodruff, Jr., is getting ready to slide into the director’s chair for a project you’re hearing about here for the very first time!

Below you’ll find the first artwork and a sneak peek at the short film King of Miseries directed by Woodruff as a stand-alone film that will set the stage for his feature length directorial debut, Fire City: The Interpreter of Signs.

Woodruff brings 20-plus years of experience and dozens of big-budget studio projects under his belt as well as his creature effects house, Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. with partner Alec Gillis. ADI’s movies include X-Men: First Class, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Alien 3, Alien vs. Predator, and most recently Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.

After years working under Stan Winston, the godfather of special effects, known for everything from Aliens to Terminator to Avatar, Tom Woodruff, Jr., partnered with Alec Gillis to create Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. in the late 1980’s. Their first film was Tremors, followed by David Fincher’s sequel Alien 3. ADI quickly grew to become one of the major character effects companies in the business today, with their work gathering numerous accolades and awards including an Academy Award for Death Becomes Her and multiple Academy Award nominations for Starship Troopers and Alien 3.

The duo are currently trying to raise funds for another all practical effects monster movie Harbinger Down.

Tom also played the demon “Rufus” in the January 2011 footage of Fire City and is looking forward to helming its prequel, The Interpreter of Signs.

King of Miseries stars John Robinson, Stacy Haiduk, and Denesa Chan. Writing-producing team Brian Lubocki and Michael Hayes, under their banner Okay By Me Productions, created a new story world called Fire City, where demons live in a fragile balance among us, but humans can’t see them for what they are. With a unique mythology, a world origin never seen before, a host of creatures, characters and storylines, Lubocki and Hayes plan to slowly roll out their world to an avid fan base waiting for a new franchise, beginning with a short film premiering online.

The short film centers on a fortune teller in the demon world, called an interpreter of signs (Haiduk), who reads the fortune of a paranoid demon named Christopher (Robinson) and discovers he’s not telling her the full story. After forcing him to reveal he’s found a device, a chronolet, that allows its user to travel back in time, the interpreter pleads with Christopher not to use the device. Not only is it impossible for her to read the fortune of a past which hasn’t happened yet, the device poses too great a danger. Will he take her advice or will he risk our future and his own for a demon’s chance at an untold fortune?

Dig on the goods below, which include the aforementioned sneak peek and poster art along with the tarot cards that are used by the Interpreter in the film (they are said to be the demon tarot and come with their own mythology as well) and an early look at the comic book tie-in, which will be available next month at San Diego Comic-Con next month and explains what happened to our characters before the start of the short film. Is that a lot to digest? Well, sure it is, but damn if it isn’t sweet!