The film looks low budget, but if it maintains the spirit, weirdness and fun of the other films, I’m down…
Angus Scrimm, Reggie Bannister, Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury and Kat Lester have returned. No release date has been set for the film which has been shooting for about two years now.
“I felt it was time to let someone else play with my train set,” Coscarelli told EW regarding the decision to let Hartman direct. “David and I go back to my film Bubba Ho-Tep. He did terrific visual effects on that, and more recently created a wild animated sequence and some amazing visual effects in my most recent film, John Dies at the End. Our aesthetics are in sync and he’s quite an experienced director in his own right.”
“Having worked with Don [Coscarelli] before, and being a huge fan of the entire Phantasm franchise, it was a great honor to do Ravager with him,” says Hartman. “This film is a real turning point in the series. There’s real closure for the core characters that I hope fans will respond to. We were fortunate to shoot amazing new sequences with horror icon Angus Scrimm—he has terrific scenes with Reggie (Bannister) and Mike (Michael Baldwin) that are truly powerful.”
“The Phantasm films have been a guerrilla operation for decades now, totally outside of the studio system,” Coscarelli notes. “We do them for the fans, and I think Ravager will definitely please them. In the past few years several studios have made offers to remake Phantasm with large budgets, but the fans were very vocal that they wanted the original cast to return and finish this iteration of the story with class. And for the first time there’s an extended sequence on the Tall Man’s home world. I know Phantasm fans will be as excited as I am to see it.”
Ravager features Reggie Bannister (a veteran of all five films) in his decades-long pursuit of the malevolent Tall Man, and it finally forces him to confront the mysteries at the heart of the Phantasm saga.
Coscarelli allows, “There are also some surprises thrown in that I promise will astonish long-time fans.”
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