You may have picked up The Hollywood Reporter's story about an outbreak of bed bugs at Toronto's Scotiabank Theatre, where much of next month's Toronto International Film Festival is supposed to be taking place. Or you may have gone eeeeew and not clicked the link. The story's been so widely reported however, that opportunistic producers Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson have been prompted to revive New Line's long-dead Bedbugs script{
Carter Blanchard's screenplay was abandoned by New Line in 2004, but Flynn and Vinson were its original backers, and they're now attempting to set it up at their own Contrafilm company. It's about a small town infestation of nocturnal killer Heteroptera that get inside you and burrow their way out. Which is a bit like a first-season episode of The X-Files, except that those were prehistoric luminous tree bugs, which is completely different.
Whether or not the script will be re-fitted to turn the small town into an international movie-con remains to be seen. As does whether the project gets anywhere at all.
TIFF have assured any concerned movie-goers that the, following a visit from pest control, the festival will be "itch free". Let us be the first to shudder at the thought and resolve to fumigate all cinemas we visit from now on.