TMNT helmer talks tussle with primates
Kevin Munroe (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ’07) is in negotiations to direct the horror movie War Monkeys, a script written by Cleve Nettles and announced by Dark Horse Indie last year. The project will be Munroe’s priority after he fulfills his obligations on Dead of Night, the live action Dylan Dog film he’s directing for Hyde Park and Platinum Studios (more on that here).
“It’s kind of like if Quentin Tarantino did Gremlins, Nettles first told me. I read it and it was exactly that. The horror stuff was at a peak and the characters are really rich,” Munroe tells ShockTillYouDrop.com.
War Monkeys, based on a story by Chris Patton, follows two guys trapped in an underground research facility with military-trained Rhesus monkeys. Munroe describes the project as “an older, meaner brother of [an] Amblin [production]. It’s real horror with real scary elements. You’ve got real monsters here with the monkeys. But the characters are a modern day Abbott and Costello. In the same vein of Shaun of the Dead but scarier.”
The director confesses he’ll likely be exorcising some of his own fears directing a film which calls for hordes of primates. “Monkeys creep me out. They’re so human-like and you never know what they’re thinking. But these military-trained monkeys. For me, it’s not just about the ability to carry a gun, but I love the idea of monkeys coming together to accomplish a goal.” And similar to Gremlins, some monkeys will carry distinguishing characteristics. “Part of it is we’re naming them to give them identifiable features, whenever you can get personalities in there, it’s going to be fun.”
Munroe is working with Nettles on another draft of script. War Monkeys will be the first film produced under a new unnamed production company he’s spearheading with Patton and Robert Sanchez. “All the projects [at our company] are really heavy genre based, but in that War Monkeys way that sort of twists them on their head.”
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
