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Top 200 Most Anticipated Films for 2014: #58. Joe Dante’s Casting the Runes

Casting the Runes

Director: Joe Dante
Writer: David Tully
Producers: Daniel Tully, Rob Heydon
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: Simon Pegg

So Joe Dante’s last film was the underrated 2009 3D film, The Hole, which sadly went direct to DVD even after being well received in Venice and Toronto that year. Now, he’s got a few projects brewing and 2014 will see the release of his film, Burying the Ex starring Anton Yelchin. But the project we are really interested in this project, which looks to be based on the same short story that inspired Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1957 film Night of the Demon, which starred Dana Andrews. While Sam Raimi did a sort of homage to the material already with his 2009 film Drag Me To Hell, Dante’s film seems more of a direct connection. And set to star Simon Pegg!

Gist: When up-and-coming actor Jake Harrington inexplicably hurls himself in front of an oncoming subway train, celebrity gossip blogger Mark Dunning smells a story in Harrington’s connection to self-help guru Simon Karswell. What Dunning isn’t prepared for is the secret behind Karswell’s motivational-speaker success: a command of dark occult forces that reveals his following to be more cult than therapy.

Release Date: While Dante is in post production on another title, we’re not sure where he is currently with Runes, but back when news broke on this in May, 2013, it seemed like this could potentially be a 2014 release.

[related]Top 200 Most Anticipated Films of 2014[/related]

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.

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