Michele Soavi Returning To Horror With A Script By Gilliam Collaborator Charles McKeown!

Simply enormous news here via Fangoria who yesterday published bits of a conversation with Italian cult director Michele Soavi.  For those unfamiliar with the name Soavi got his start as an actor in 1978 and through the course of his career worked with literally all the big guns of Italian cult cinema.  He’s most closely associated with Dario Argento whome he worked for and collaborated with on a number of titles.  In ‘94 Soavi shot was is arguably the last truly great Italian cult film - Dellamorte, Dellamore, known on these shores as Cemetary Man, starring a then-unknown Rupert Everett - before dropping off the scene for a number of years to care for a sick family member.  While he was gone the Italian film industry pretty much collapsed and when Soavi was ready to return to work he simply couldn’t get any feature projects off the ground and ended up spending many years directing for television.  He made his return to features in 2006 with Arrivederci Amore, Ciao - a gangster film very high on style but a touch spotty narratively - and now he is finally ready to return to the genre where he made his name.

Shooting is slated to commence this summer on Soavi’s long awaited return to horror film, a picture titled Catacomb Club.  Scripted by regular Terry Gilliam collaborator Charles McKeown the picture involves a club owner, a would-be lounge singer and thousand year old creatures locked in ancient catacombs beneath London.  Soavi promises that the film “is definitely in the spirit of CEMETERY MAN and has a similar atmosphere.” The Gilliam conection may seem odd on first look but the connection actually runs quite deep, Soavi first becoming friends with Gilliam and McKeown when he served as second unit director on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a role he repeated on The Brothers Gimm.

As an added perk for fans Soavi also confirmed that he has spoken to Everett about reprising his role from Cemetary Man - and it’s not like Everett’s doing much else right now - and that he would love to shoot a sequel if they could find the right story.