Updates on Blumhouse’s Stephen King Adaptation Mercy and Bryan Bertino’s Mockingbird

Steve Barton   |  

Feb 28, 2014

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Flipboard
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on WhatsApp
• Share via Email

The Hollywood Reporter just issued an odd little article which adds some insight into the films produced by Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions. In it were updates on two projects that are currently sitting on the shelf: Mercy and Mockingbird.

According to THR, the Stephen King adaptation Mercy, directed by Haunting in Connecticut‘s Peter Cornwell and starring Dylan McDermott, Frances O’Connor, Chandler Riggs, Joel Courtney, Shirley Knight, and Chris Browning, finished shooting a year ago and is among the Blumhouse films sitting on Universal’s shelf.

Studio chairman Donna Langley says the studio still is not counting it out. What does that mean exactly? Probably that they will just dump it on home video and move along.

Synopsis
Based on a short story by Stephen King, Mercy tells the tale of two young boys (“The Walking Dead’s” Chandler Riggs and Super 8’s Joel Courtney) who move with their mother to take care of their dying grandmother at her decrepit farmhouse. When they suspect that the elderly woman they love has encountered a dark spirit, they fear she might not be the only one who won’t make it through the summer alive.

Once George (Riggs) and Buddy McCoy (Courtney) arrive at their Gramma Mercy’s (Shirley Knight), what they find inside her 150-year-old home is nothing short of terrifying. As the brothers experience deeply disturbing phenomena they believe to be the work of an ancient witch, they must fight for their lives and overcome the evil forces threatening their family.

Also on the shelf is The Strangers director Bryan Bertino’s Mockingbird, starring Todd Stashwick, Audrey Marie Anderson, and Alexa Lydo. That film wrapped in May 2012; Langley confirms there are conversations about doing reshoots. Blum “goes into complete hiatus” on some films, she says, “and he’ll go back into production when he has time and cracked the idea or execution.”

Synopsis
Found footage thriller centering on three cameras that are given to three separate households on the same night with instructions to keep filming if they want to live, but as the night wears on, the characters are pulled into a deadly confrontation with each other at the behest of their unseen tormentor.

Hopefully we’ll have more on both of these titles for you soon.

Subscribe to our Newsletter