TrollHunter Director Seizes Carpe Demon

vredal pitches for slayer soccer momIt's not unusual for directors of breakout international hits to be lured to Hollywood, and TrollHunter director Andre Øvredal is the latest to join the club. He's just signed on for Carpe Demon: The Adventures Of A Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom, adapted from the book by Julie Kenner.First published in 2005, the novel is the first in a series (franchise!) about Kate Connor, a woman living a life of suburban domesticity and trying to put her secret past as a slayer of demons firmly behind her. Except that plan comes undone when underworld denizens start surfacing in her adopted hometown of San Diablo.In short, it's a kind of Buffy-as-grown-up affair: Whatever Happened To Buffy?, if you like. There are five instalments to date, with Carpe Demon being followed by California Demon, Demons Are Forever, Deja Demon and Demon Ex Machina.The screenplay is by Dan and Kevin Hagerman (Hotel Transylvania), but we're not yet hearing any start dates or potential cast. The rights to the book currently reside with Chris Columbus' 1492 production company, who are also planning the English-language TrollHunter remake. Coincidence? No.Øvredal has shown pretty conclusively with TrollHunter that he can juggle humour and horror successfully, so he seems like a reasonable fit for the material. Let's hope he isn't overpowered by the bigger budgets of the Hollywood machine.

Will Ferrell Explains the Origins of Casa de mi Padre, His Spanish Telenovela Comedy

Will Ferrell movies can usually be summed up as Will Ferrell as a and you get it. Will Ferrell as a reporter? Thats funny. Will Ferrell as a NASCAR driver? Also funny. But Will Ferrell as a Spanish soap opera action hero? Casa de mi Padre is a Spanish language film starring Ferrell as a ranchers son who goes to war with drug dealers to protect his brothers girl (Genesis Rodriguez). Where, exactly, did he come up with this idea? At the films press junket today, Ferrell said hed had this idea for five to seven years. The inspiration struck him, as such ideas do, during a 2:00 a.m. channel surfing session. Im probably like so many people, turning on the television going through the channels at two in the morning and landing on a telenovela going, What is this? Why are they so over the top? This is amazing, Ferrell said. Thats my exposure to them. Id always had this idea of thats such a heightened, funny world that it would be really funny to see myself in that world. I thought God, youve never seen an American comic in a foreign language film and have them commit to it in a way thats believable. I thought thats something if you could pull it off, that would be an original movie. The TV dramas that pop up on Univision or Telemundo in the states take the drama pretty seriously. You can tell Ferrell thinks its funny by all the intentional mistakes (continuity errors, visible boom mics, stuffed animatronic animals and mannequin stand-ins) intentionally placed in Casa de mi Padre, which is written by Andrew Steele and directed by Matt Piedmont, both alumni of Saturday Night Live and Funny or Die. It technically really isnt an homage to telenovelas, Ferrell said. Telenovela is kind of the broad description for it but its an homage to that, its an homage to the Mexican spaghetti western. Its an homage to bad moviemaking, continuity mistakes. Its an homage to overacting. Its an homage to stuffed wild animals. Once we started writing the script and talking about how we were going to shoot the movie, we saw this was a real opportunity to play around with a bunch of different elements. The script by Steele was written in English, then the dialogue translated into Spanish. Ferrell only speaks en espanol; only an American character delivers a few lines of English. Of course, now Ferrell only remembers the naughty words. Chingado is a good one, he said. I love that word. Chinga this, chinga that. Thats a good word, but thats commonly used. Chinga is the F word. Ferrell got over the language barrier on his first day of filming. For some reason the schedule worked out to where I literally had like a two page monologue in Spanish on the first day. Once I got the first couple takes under my belt, and I could see people watching behind the monitors going, His Spanish is okay. Its not that bad. Then I thought oh, okay. Im going to make my way through this. Had I kept up with the Spanish, Id be really good right now. But I didnt. I could make my way at a resort. At the Four Seasons in Mexico Id probably be okay. Fulfilling his dream of starring in a Spanish language melodrama, Ferrell was proud to use his box office clout to get an outrageous film made. This ranks up there as one of the things Ive gotten to do which you can only be so lucky to be in a position to take risks like this. Casa de mi Padre opens March 16. Watch the trailer here. Follow Fred Topel on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.