The masters of horror are moving to Microsoft. But there’s a new spin, or more properly, a couple new spins. This fall a series of short films by horror directors will arrive on the Xbox Live subscription service. The catch: the shorts are comedies, not horror.
I am almost saddened and confused by this news, but one light illuminates the darkness: James Gunn is part of the slate, and is exec producing the whole shebang. His short “Humanzee!” stars Gunn in a story about ‘a dude who sends his sperm off to a secret laboratory in Bratislava. They put it in a turkey baster and shove it up a female chimpanzee and out comes my human/chimp hybrid son named, appropriately, Humanzee (played by Sean Gunn). Then he’s delivered through the mail, and we fuck with him. The show also stars Valentine Miele, from TROMEO & JULIET, as well as Jenna Haze, Michael Rooker, Mackenzie Firgens, and Mikaela Hoover.‘
(That’s from Gunn’s Myspace blog, which is replete with other colorful swear words and some frightening photos.)
The rest of the participants are James Wan, David Slade, Lucky McKee, Andrew Douglas and Marcus Nispel.
Variety runs down some of the other plots like Libyans chasing a mad scientist in a mall parking lot: “Doggie Heaven,” from Wan and Saw franchise scribe Leigh Whannell, revolves around a young man who, after being shot, is sent to the wrong heaven…and Slade’s “Meatdog” features an animated mutt made up of cold cuts who is pitted against a church of occult pigs while pursued by a carnivorous rabbit and slobbering hound.
Rather than announcing the slate last week at E3, where it might have been buried amid announcements about the deal linking NetFlix and Xbox Live, producer Peter Safran saved the goods for Comic Con, where the shorts will be previewed on Friday.