Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures and Orion Pictures Partner With MastersFX For Lars Klevberg’s "Child’s Play"
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- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Wednesday, 26 December 2018 07:34
Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures (MGM) has partnered with Emmy Award-winning character FX studio MastersFX to bring to life the BUDDI doll, a contemporary version of the iconic Good Guys doll for Orion Pictures' much anticipated Child's Play.
The announcement comes from producers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith (It, It: Chapter Two), on board for the upcoming film directed by Lars Klevberg (Polaroid).
MastersFX has brought the new Chucky doll to life on screen like never before in a mixture of practical on-set puppet work and digital FX enhancements.
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Todd Masters, founder of MastersFX, and his team took six weeks to prepare and assemble seven practical animatronic puppets, each with interchangeable arms and heads that perform a variety of required actions on set. The FX team, led by ace puppeteer Keith Arbuthnot, along with Mike Fields, Jason Ward and Josh Raymond each controlled a different part of the doll.
"It was important to Lars that we use animatronics as much as possible," said Katzenberg. "As fans of Todd's work, we were thrilled when he and his team of exceptional artists and puppeteers agreed to take on the challenge of creating our take on a classic character."
"Reconceiving a well-loved classic always feels like wading into tricky waters, however, Lars' fresh vision for this film turned what could have been a challenging process into a seamless and beautiful collaboration," said Masters. "MGM and Orion's Child's Play is not a remake or retelling but a completely new style and concept and we believe that BUDDI fits with this vision perfectly."
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Child's Play, a contemporary version of the iconic horror classic, follows a mother who gives her son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
Directed by Kleverg and written by Tyler Burton Smith Kung Fury, Quantum Break video game), the film stars Aubrey Plaza (Ingrid Goes West, FX's Legion, Safety Not Guaranteed) as Karen, Emmy and Tony nominee Brian Tyree Henry (FX's Atlanta, Widows, If Beale Street Could Talk) as Mike and Gabriel Bateman (Lights Out, CBS's American Gothic) as Andy.
Child's Play is produced by Katzenberg and Grahame-Smith under their KatzSmith Productions banner, with Aaron Schmidt and Chris Ferguson executive producing. Orion Pictures will release Child's Play in theaters nationwide on June 21, 2019.
Next on the Orion Pictures slate is Nicholas McCarthy's supernatural horror thriller The Prodigy starring Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Taylor Schilling (Netflix's Orange Is the New Black) and breakout star Jackson Robert Scott (It, AMC's Fear the Walking Dead), opening in theaters on February 8, 2019.
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Orion Pictures is currently in production on Osgood Perkins' Gretel and Hansel, a horror retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale starring Sophia Lillis (It, HBO's Sharp Objects), Sammy Leakey, Charles Babalola (Mary Magdalene, Netflix's Black Mirror), Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact, Silent Hill) and Jessica De Gouw (NBC's Dracula, CW's Arrow); recently attached filmmaker Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound, XX) to the reimagining of the 1984 critically acclaimed cult classic Night of the Comet; acquired rights to remake the critically acclaimed Icelandic psychological horror film Rökkur' (Rift) for U.S. audiences; and are in development on Casa, a social horror thriller centered around an intergenerational Latino family from brothers Andres and Diego Meza- Valdés (Boniato).
About Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) is a leading entertainment company focused on the production and global distribution of film and television content across all platforms. The company owns one of the world's deepest libraries of premium film and television content as well as the premium pay television network EPIX, which is available throughout the U.S. via cable, satellite, telco and digital distributors. In addition, MGM has investments in numerous other television channels, digital platforms and interactive ventures and is producing premium short-form content for distribution. For more information, visit www.mgm.com.
About Orion Pictures
Relaunched in 2017 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Orion Pictures is a stand-alone U.S. theatrical marketing and distribution company focused on collaborating with innovative filmmakers with unique voices across all genres and platforms. Originally founded in 1978, the studio's past releases included crowd-pleasing hits like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hoosiers, RoboCop, The Terminator and the Bill & Ted series alongside such critically acclaimed films as Academy Award Best Picture winners Amadeus, Platoon, Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs.
About MASTERSFX:
Founded in 1987 by two-time Emmy Award winner Todd Masters, MASTERSFX is a multi-award winning character and special FX house with studios in Los Angeles, CA, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Toronto, Ontario.
MASTERSFX's creative teams produce a unique blend of practical and digital makeup and special FX, prosthetics and animatronics, through a process called "dMFX," for hundreds of hit feature films, TV shows, and commercials. Creators of the cadavers for Six Feet Under, vampires from True Blood, Borg FX for Star Trek, and the baby makers from Look Who's Talking.
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MASTERSFX has been contributing its blend of custom practical and digital FX to a wide range of TV and feature film projects for nearly 30 years.
The company also supplies dummies and detailed FX props for studios to rent, and custom and stock temporary tattoos, as well as their unique, fast-apply prosthetic system, ProGASH.
Included among the TV projects to which MASTERSFX has contributed its work are True Blood, Six Feet Under, Tales from the Crypt, Fringe, and many others. Among the company's film credits are RoboCop, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Haunting in Connecticut, Star Trek: First Contact, The Horse Whisperer, Slither, Snakes on a Plane, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Look Who's Talking, and dozens more.
A multi-award winning FX artist, Masters is the winner of 2016 Leo and Daytime Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Makeup" for the Netflix series, Monsterville. He is also the winner of an Emmy Award in 2003 for the 2001/2002 Season of Six Feet Under in the category "Best Special Effects Makeup". In 2006, MASTERSFX won a "Saturn Award" for "Best Make-Up FX" for its work on the film Slither. See more at: www.mastersfx.com.
