Everyone’s talking about MGM, Paramount, and Universal this summer, but for some reason, nobody but me has the inside scoop on this summer’s films from indie horror/sci-fi titan The Asylum! Well, I know you all wanted that rectified, so here’s the inside scoop on their upcoming releases!
FEBRUARY:
February is traditionally a light month for blockbusters, but the same can’t be said for mockbusters; the Asylum is releasing “Spectral Riders: Vengeful Spirit” early next month. The film focuses on a horse ranch in California that’s haunted by demonic spirits that possess their horses, turning them into “spectral riders” that hunt down the ranch hands one by one. The same month features the release of horror film “The Lady In Black”, about a wizarding school whose ghosts turn against them, and “The Chronicles”, about a secret book that can bestow superpowers and the teenage boys who go searching for it. But perhaps the most exciting news is the Asylum’s 3-D re-release of their “lost classic”, “The Phantasmal Menace”, about a secret order of alien samurai that do battle with evil kung-fu ghosts that possess corpses.
MARCH:
The month of March sees the long-anticipated sequel to their film “Princess of Mars”. “Prince of Mars” shows how John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr) returns to the world of Barsoom and rises to the position of Warlord alongside his love, Dejah Thoris (played once again by Traci Lords.) This one is rumored to have a serious budget to compete with Disney’s rip-off project, “John Carter”, possibly even as much as two million dollars! (That’s a lot of dollars.) March also sees the release of “The Starvation Games”, a gruesome horror flick about a fasting competition started by a group of anorexics, and “Fury of the Titans”, a movie about the ancient Greek gods re-emerging in modern-day Los Angeles.
APRIL:
The Asylum takes a bit of a respite in April, only coming out with one film, but it’s a doozy. “Titanic: Adventures in the Third Dimension” is the true saga of what happened to the legendary lost vessel, as it passes through a vortex contained in the heart of an iceberg (known as “The Heart of the Sea”) and two of its passengers, Jackson and Rosie, must battle the ferocious natives of the lost planet of Pandorra. But will the robotic Terminatrix be their ally…or their assassin?
MAY:
May sees an exciting twist on the “found footage” genre with “The Avenged”, about a group of everyday people trapped in Los Angeles in the middle of a vast superhero/supervillain battle. Those who’ve seen the advanced screenings have described it as “like “Cloverfield”, but with supervillains”, and some consider it the Asylum’s most ‘avant-garde’ release. Fans of military action might prefer “American Battleship”, an exciting drama about a battleship lost in the Bermuda Triangle and fighting aliens, while fans of horror will no doubt get excited about “Darkest Shadows”, the tale of an immortal vampire who has an irrational fear of darkness, but cannot survive in sunlight. Meanwhile, fans of the “weird west” genre will get their fill with “Three Men In Black”, a tale of three outlaws who ride into a town beseiged by zombies.
JUNE:
In June, the Asylum finally releases their long-anticipated “Grimm’s Snow White”, an ultra-faithful retelling of the Snow White story that returns it to its gory roots, along with “American G.I.: Retribution”, an action thriller about three soldiers trapped behind enemy lines who have to take down a secret research lab that creates vampire cyborg lizard zombie ninja pirahnas. (The zombie theme continues with “George Washington, Zombie Hunter”, which purports to tell ‘the true history of the Revolutionary War’.)
JULY:
The Asylum is officially declaring July “superhero month”, as they come out with twin action blockbusters that focus on capes and cowls. “Amazing: Rise of the Spider-King” takes the super-hero saga and inverts it, telling the tale from the point of view of a two-bit punk as he attempts to become the hero ‘Spider-King’, only to find that his past won’t let him go. At the same time, “Fall of the Darkest Knight” is a tragic tale of the last battle of New York’s legendary superhero, as he tries one last time to battle evil with a body that is finally beginning to betray him. (Rumor has it that the two films were shot simultaneously, with the Darkest Knight battling it out with Spider-King in the finale, but The Asylum will neither confirm nor deny this exciting tidbit of info!)
AUGUST-OCTOBER:
After the breakneck pace of the summer, August finally sees a slowdown to the release schedule between the end of the summer movie season and the start of the Christmas season. (After the blockbuster action we’ve already discussed, we might need to take a breath!) Only “Totally Recalled” is on the Asylum slate, scheduled for August. According to the press release, this is an experimental sci-fi film about a man who develops a memory enhancer so perfect that it actually can summon past memories into tangible existence…which becomes all too dangerous when taken by an FBI profiler trying to catch a killer.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER:
And as we finally enter the holidays, it becomes clear that the Asylum has saved the best for last. “Broken Dawn” is the terrifying tale of a pack of vampires stalked by a relentless, obsessive romantic named Dawn; this girl’s creepy, emotionally manipulative vampire fetish even freaks out the undead! Elsewhere, “Zombie World War” is an alternate history saga of a World War II fought by Germans with access to voodoo sorcery, while “Fallen Sky” is the story of a superspy’s attempts to stop a madman from hacking into the guidance systems of the world’s satellites and turning them into orbital-strike missiles. But the film everyone’s talking about is “The Unexpected Journey of the Habit”, an urban-fantasy saga about a nun recruited by a modern-day pagan shaman to rescue a circus (the Asylum used just about every actor under four feet tall in Hollywood!) from a demonic entity in the form of a gaseous cloud. The spectacular battle between the nun and Smog supposedly took upwards of a week to render digitally!
So for those of you who want to see movies, but can’t afford to see actual movies, the Asylum has your 2012 set!
(Note: Two of the titles in this are real. Try to guess which two without looking it up.)
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21 users responded in this post
ONLY two? I would’ve guessed ALL of ’em….
Off-hand, I’m guessing “Titanic: Adventures in the Third Dimension” and “Amazing: Rise of the Spider-King”. (With “The Avenged” and “Grimm’s Snow White” as possible runners-up.)
I want “The Avenged” to be real, so therefore it can’t be. Ditto “Phantasmal Menace.” I’m going with “American G.I.: Retribution” and “Fury of the Titans.”
Well John, you might be in luck as they’re currently accepting pitches.
I’m just saying, Antonio Sabato Jr looks like hell. As much as two million dollars isn’t near enough for the CGI he’d need alone. AND he probably demands to be paid in protein shakes, which probably aren’t that cheap. Might as well get Joe Cortes.
Man, a LOT of these sound plausible for The Asylum. I’m gonna go with the two public domain ones, Prince of Mars and Grimm’s Snow White, but Fury of the Titans, The Avenged, American Battleship, Spider-King, Three Men in Black, and all the zombie-related titles could be real too.
I couldn’t help myself; I looked. I guessed one, but the other one just makes me look skyward screaming “Why?! WHY?!” Doesn’t the movie it’s knocking off look dumb enough already?
Man, I would totally watch The Avenged.
I would really like to see The Avenged. You know, assuming it was actually given a real treatment, because that sounds like a bitchin approach. any chance a frontline movie is on Marvel’s horizon?
And George Washington, Zombie Hunter sounds cool, because I assume George Washington would hunt zombies.
Without looking, I’m going to guess Prince Of Mars and Fury Of The Titans. Now I’m going to go look.
Dang.
I think you’ve stumbled onto Asylum’s secret, which is to make cheap movies w/such a mix-master of ingridients that you can slap any ol’ title on ’em so long as it sould like a current release.
This is why Blockbuster Video stores went out of business. No one trusted the dvd titles anymore…
I know it’s way too dated a title for Asylum, but I saw “Three Men In Black” and my mind turned to their first go-rounds, “Three Men and a Black Baby” (starring Kel Mitchell) and “Three Men and a Little Black Lady” (starring Kel Mitchell and Lori Beth Denberg) wherein the three MIB try to integrate an alien academy.
Movies like these were the bane of my existence at Blockbuster. You have NO idea how often some customer would come to me, angrily demanding to know why we ‘gave them the wrong movie’ because they got taken in by the title. It got to the point where I’d tell everyone who brought one up to make sure that was the film they wanted.
And for the record, there are still Blockbusters around. Not a lot of them, and I wouldn’t give them much lifespan at this point, but they’re around. Although it IS worth noting that the company publicly declared bankruptcy the day after my two weeks notice were up. I like to call that a personal victory.
I guessed Prince of Mars (because I know for a fact that Princess of Mars is real — and damn, Traci Lords can still fill a metal bikini), and George Washington, Zombie Hunter.
Then I went to their website to check, and discovered your great omission.
2 Headed Shark Attack.
When a college educational ship is sunk by a mutated two-headed shark, the survivors escape to a deserted atoll. But when it starts flooding, the coeds are no longer safe from the double jaws of the monster.
Mutated. Two-headed. Shark.
Dude.
They have an upcoming movie called Celebrity Sex Tape. Wow.
My guesses were Spectral Riders: Vengeful Spirit and Grimm’s Snow White, based on how they rip off almost every third rate superhero movie and the fact that there are 2 big budget Snow White movies this year.
I was very excited by that list and then very sad reading that only 2 are real.
I would add my vote for the Avenged – that film surely must be made!
I’m going to guess “The Chronicles”, and “Fallen Sky”. I went to the movie theater yesterday to see “Haywire”, and I’m 90 percent sure I remember the poster for “The Chronicles”. walked by the posters for those. However, “Fallen Sky” is just a guess; it seems like the least ridiculous option. Who knows, though.
Oh, wait, “The Asylum” is a low-budget, direct-to-video, mockbuster production company? I missed that. I think I might have misunderstood the guessing game, then. Were we supposed to guess which of those were “serious” movies as opposed to Asylum titles, or which of them were movies at all as opposed to your invention, which was my understanding?
Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. My guess is the same either way. (Maybe I shouldn’t be that confident of my memory of the “The Chronicles” poster, but still.)
Oh, I’m falling about laughing!
Okay, “Grimm’s Snow White” is one of the real ones, but what’s the other? All I see are two near misses: “George Washington, Zombie Hunter” (it’s actually “Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies”) and “American Battleship” (really “American Warships”).
Never mind — I just checked what the Wikipedia article looked like when this was originally posted, and “American Battleship” was on the list. Maybe it was a working title.