Killer Director Line-up for ‘Paris I’ll Kill You’

Ah Paris. The city of lights. Romance in the air. Fresh baked goods. Wine. Eiffel Tower. Murder?

What do names Joe Dante (with whom we recently spoke to), Paco Plaza, Vincenzo Natali, Xavier Gens, Christopher Smith, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (see pic above), German music video helmer Joern Heitmann and Ryuhei Kitamura all have in common? Producers Darryn Welch and Mathieu Robinet are getting ready to (easily) sell the short film collective going by the title of Paris I’ll Kill You (an obvious play with the title Paris, I Love You) and have set the seven above filmmakers/filmmaker teams on Paris IKU. Chris Ouwinga will executive producer with K5 Film’s Oliver Simon, Daniel Baur and Carl Clifton.

Gist: Inspired by “Paris, je t’aime”, this is a horror omnibus described as a look at the seedy underbelly of the city of love. Producers could easily follow along in the footsteps of its more lovey dovey counterpart by setting up shop in New York and Tokyo in the future installments.

Worth Noting: Christopher Smith and Ryuhei Kitamura have both made horror films set in the underground subways, respectively with Creep, and Midnight Meat Train. Big question: will either of them return to the same setting with Paris’ famous metro system?

Why Do We Care?: The portmanteaus are always hit and miss and will likely not change in this format. There are some good names in the batch, what I do expect is for the French filmmakers to have a natural edge — we loved Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s breakout film Inside, (one of the finer horror films of the past decade) and are hoping they can relaunch their career after a couple of failed “remake” attempts on Weinsteins projects.