After acquiring David Gordon Green‘s Prince Avalanche, which is said to be a long-awaited return-to-form for the writer-director, Magnolia Pictures has quickly worked its way back into the conversation of recent Sundance purchases: according to Variety, the company “is nearing a deal to acquire” S-VHS, the sequel to 2012’s horror anthology V/H/S, which Magnolia also picked up at Sundance last January.
We weren’t too keen on the film when we reviewed it the other day, calling it “a sub-par incarnation of the original,” but word elsewhere has been a bit more positive, and the film’s likely to attract the audiences that were so taken with the original. One area where our review aligned nicely with popular consensus is in the Indonesia-set segment from Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption). This vignette has “garnered the strongest reaction on social media,” says the Variety report, and our review was similarly enthusiastic in that regard: “Evans and Tjahjanto push the envelope for what one can do with a short and deserve a chance to make a feature length horror film together.”
Other makers on S-VHS include Adam Wingard (the only returning voice from V/H/S), Gregg Hale (a producer on The Blair Witch Project), and Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun). As the deal doesn’t appear officially confirmed just yet, there’s still some key information left unknown, though I’m intrigued to eventually learn not only how much the deal is going for (Magnolia bought V/H/S for around $1 million), but also if the distributor plans to use the VOD platform once again.
What did you think of V/H/S? Are you looking forward to the sequel?