James Gunn and Greg McLean Team for The Belco Experiment
Steve Barton
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Want to talk about a good reason to get really excited? This is it! James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Super, Slither, Dawn of the Dead) just announced via his Facebook page that he’s completed a script for Wolf Creek director, Greg McLean. Read on for details.
From James Gunn of Facebook:
I’m incredibly excited to announce that we’re commencing production on a new film, The Belco Experiment, from my own script. The story revolves around the American Belco company in South America which is mysteriously sealed off at the beginning of a work day, and its employees are ordered to kill each other or be killed themselves. This starts an escalation of violence, where we discover the true nature of each and every Belco employee.
The film will be directed by Greg McLean, who directed the Wolf Creek films, and it will be produced by myself, and Peter Safran, who produced Annabelle and The Conjuring. MGM will be financing. We’re in pre-production now and will be shooting in Bogota, Colombia in early June of this year.
I cannot tell you how passionate and excited I am about this project! It’s a script I wrote a few years ago, for which I have always had a deep love. Believe it or not, it’s a film that first came to me in a dream, and I woke up and wrote the first draft in a two-week fugue state binge.
One of the first people to ever read the script, Jonathan Glickman, carried it around with him for years until becoming President of MGM, when he approached Peter Safran and I about financing it. I was all for it, providing two things: 1) Although it has the heart and humor my films have all had, it is also the most intense and uncompromising script I’ve ever written. It would need to stay true to that. 2) I’d only do it if we found the right director – which, in some ways, I thought was unlikely.
Jon promised we’d make the film with full integrity – and, so far, MGM has – awesomely – been true to their word. And, after a long, concentrated search for a director we came to Greg McLean. Greg shares my philosophy about honesty in film, and his naturalistic style lends itself to Belco. The past few weeks we’ve spent working together have been a joy – I don’t know if I’ve ever related to another filmmaker’s sense of aesthetics and love of film more.
Say tuned for more as it comes!
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