I never imagined I would someday be writing about a Faces of Death remake that has stars of well-known TV shows in its cast, and yet here we are. About two years ago, we heard that writer Isa Mazzei and director Daniel Goldhaber, the team that brought us the Netflix release Cam, had been hired to craft a remake of the infamous 1978 box office hit Faces of Death (get it HERE) for Legendary Entertainment and producers Don Murphy and Susan Montford’s company Angry Films. A few weeks ago, Barbie Ferreira of the HBO series Euphoria and Dacre Montgomery of Netflix’s Stranger Things were cast in the remake. And now Deadline has broken the news that Josie Totah, who had a role in the recent Saved by the Bell revival, has also signed on to be in Faces of Death.
The first Faces of Death was about a pathologist exploring gruesome ways to die via footage purportedly culled from around the world. In reality, most of the death scenes were staged, but no matter, the movie had its producers’ desired effect: outrage, revulsion, banning (although not in 52 countries, as hyped by the film’s makers), and, of course, a money-making hit that spawned sequels and imitators. It was written and directed by John Alan Schwartz, who used multiple pseudonyms for several crew jobs on the flick.
Seven sequels followed over the next twenty-one years.
Mazzei and Goldhaber provided the following statement about their approach to the concept: “Faces of Death was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online.“
When it was first announced that Mazzei and Goldhaber were taking on the project, it was said that their story will center on a female moderator of a YouTube-like website whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, who stumbles across a group that is re-creating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age of online misinformation, the question is: Are the murders real or fake? It’s not clear if that story is still in place, but we do know that Legendary is aiming to make this “more in the psychological horror field than in the slasher mould”.
Murphy and Montford are producing the Faces of Death remake with Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath. Rick Benattar serves as executive producer, with Cory Kaplan co-producing. Murphy and Montford have been hoping to make a new version of Faces of Death ever since 2006, and for several years they had J.T. Petty attached to write and direct. They started the development process over from scratch when they hired Mazzei and Goldhaber… and now Mazzei and Goldhaber’s version is scheduled to begin filming later this month.
Are you interested in the Faces of Death remake? What do you think of Josie Totah joining Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery in the cast? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.