Empire has released a group of images of Bad Times At The El Royale (2018), the new movie written and directed by Drew Goddard (follow this link to their official website if you want to see more). This drama thriller is currently in post-production and expected to hit theaters worldwide in October.
The movie, with a very attractive cast plagued with A-class stars, is placed in the late 1960s’ California. In it, seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe‘s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past in 1969. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption… before everything goes to hell. A young concierge (Lewis Pullman) greets the strangers: a down-on-his-luck priest (Jeff Bridges), a singer (Cynthia Erivo), an impressionable Southern girl (Cailee Spaeny) and her older sister (Dakota Johnson), a vacuum cleaner salesman (Jon Hamm), and a charismatic cult leader (Chris Hemsworth). Other actors like Nick Offerman, Manny Jacinto, Mark O’Brien, Jonathan Whitesell, Sarah Smyth, Bethany Brown or Alvina August complete the cast.
Bad Times At The El Royale (2018) is the second feature film from Drew Goddard, who had a short but intense career as TV series writer and producer, being part of the crew in titles like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003), Alias (2001–2006), Lost (2004–2010) or Daredevil (2015– ), and whose debut film The Cabin in the Woods (2012) became an undisputed instant classic for the lovers of horror and monster flicks, a genre so chastised with unoriginaliy and an infinite amount of remakes that rarely bring much interest to the original films. After being involved as writer of recent movies like Cloverfield (2008), World War Z (2013) and The Martian (2015), and executive producer of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), there was big expectations to what new original title was the American filmmaker getting ready for us. And here it is.
In a conversation with EW, writer and director Drew Goddard tried to explain his approach to Bad Times At The El Royale (2018): “Like everything I do, it’s hard to describe in one sentence. […] Rather than starting from an idea and a logline, this started from a basic premise: A bunch of characters check into a hotel on one night in 1969, and nobody is who they appear. […] I started with that very simple concept, wrote the roles, and then let the characters dictate the story”. And for those who are craving for another refreshing horror film like was The Cabin in the Woods (2012), better lower your expectations. Goddard continues “The Cabin in the Woods (2012) was very much about the genre itself; this certainly is not. It’s more of a straightforward narrative”. But that doesn’t mean this is supposed to be your regular hollow mystery thriller drama flick, because Goddard concludes with a intriguing and promising “We certainly don’t play it safe”. And that’s how we like movies, right? Never play it safe!
