Producer Sam Raimi will make his New York Comic Con debut at this year's panel for The Grudge reboot. Long before he directed the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man trilogy in the 2000s, Raimi made his name as a horror filmmaker, directing movies like The Evil Dead and Darkman in addition to the former's horror-comedy sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. And although he hasn't directed a horror movie since 2009's Drag Me to Hell, Raimi has since served as a producer on the Poltergeist remake, in addition to the hit thrillers Don't Breathe and this summer's Crawl.
For his next trick, Raimi is producing The Grudge (also referred to as simply Grudge), a reboot of the U.S. Grudge franchise that, in turn, was based on the Japanese Ju-On horror film series. The movie was officially delayed from this summer to January 2020 back in January, but is currently expected to stick to its latest release date. And to prove it, Sony will kick off the reboot's marketing push with a presentation at the 2019 NYCC in October.
NYCC has now officially announced that The Grudge reboot's panel will take place on Thursday, October 3 at 4 pm EST on the Main Stage at the Javits Center. Raimi will be attending the event along with the film's director, Nicolas Pesce, and cast members Betty Gilpin (GLOW) and Lin Shaye (Insidious). Presumably, they will unveil the first-look footage from The Grudge during the presentation.
Written by Pesce from an earlier script draft by Jeff Buhler (The Prodigy, Pet Sematary 2019), The Grudge reboot stars Andrea Riseborough (Mandy) as a single mother and detective who investigates a mysterious murder in which a young mother abruptly killed her family inside her home... only to discover (all too late) that the house is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms anyone who enters it. The film marks a change of pace for Pesce after his previous efforts on the black-and-white arthouse horror film The Eyes of My Mother and horror-comedy Piercing (which opened in select theaters earlier this year). It's easily his most mainstream movie to date, and pairs him with an impressive cast that also includes Demián Bichir, John Cho, and Jacki Weaver.
While the 2004 U.S. Grudge movie (which Raimi also produced) was a commercial success, most critics agreed it was less effective at re-imagining a Japanese horror story for American audiences than Gore Verbinski's The Ring had been two years earlier. The sequel got an even weaker response and saw a hefty drop-off at the box office in 2006, which resulted in The Grudge 3 being released direct to DVD in 2009. Pesce, however, has described his reboot as a very different take on the property that hews closer to a psychological thriller in the vein of Seven than the previous movies. The Grudge's NYCC panel will be one to keep an eye on, for that very reason.
Source: New York Comic Con