Magnet Place Gareth Edward’s ‘Monsters’ in Quarantine

Here’s hoping that the first purchase out of SXSW receives at least 1/20th of the overwhelming support that Paranormal Activity got in its box office take. After the film’s premiere screening at the Austin-based film festival, Magnet didn’t waste much time securing the rights to Monsters – the company know for its Six Shooter series have grabbed Gareth Edward’s indie film debut which is part road movie, part sci-fi.

The film should logically be released after Centurion, a film that I think could be Magnet Releasing’s big ticket item and should perform better than a 2 million dollar take that Let the Right One made. Normally a less than 100 grand fate is what we’d expect with Monsters, but I think a doubled effort building off the buzz from SXSW could do a lot for the film. One thing is for sure, Gareth Edward, a BAFTA award-winning and Emmy-nominated visual effects artist might become an in-demand director once the industry realized how much he did with very little.

Produced by Allan Niblo and James Richardson of Vertigo Films, Monsters was shot as a road movie, traveling through Guatemala, Mexico and the US, involving local people alongside leads Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able. Here the synopsis and trailer below:

Six years ago previously, a NASA probe returning to earth with samples of an alien life form, crashed over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear, and half of Mexico was quarantined as an “INFECTED ZONE. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain “the creatures”… The story begins when a US journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.