New Directors For Martyrs Remake

We haven't heard anything about the once-mooted Martyrs remake for about five years, but it's just raised its head again at Austin's Fantastic Fest. A tweet from the festival organisers reveals not only that the torture basement is back in operation, but also that it's now situated in Jason Blum's Blumhouse with new directors in-situ. The Goetz brothers (Kevin and Michael), who made 2013's The Scenic Route with Josh Duhamel, are the latest incumbents replacing Daniel Stamm.

Pascal Laugier's extraordinarily brutal original 2008 French horror is, on the surface, about two young women who've grown up together in an orphanage facing down a disturbing past. But, as Stamm pointed out when we spoke to him previously, "Every time you think you know where it's going, it goes somewhere else." Beginning as a home invasion revenge/thriller, it takes a turn into something like J-horror when one of the girls seems to be being haunted by a black-haired ghoul (with an implanted metal face plate), before veering again into the discovery of a torture basement and a secret cult, with existential musings on martyrdom, and flaying.

It is total madness, not least because, if you believe Laugier, it was conceived and produced more-or-less on the fly. It'll be very difficult to reimagine Martyrs with a more coherent screenplay without taming it and pulling its teeth.

Stamm's version was going to add "a glimmer of hope" to the nihilism and play up the friendship angle between the two girls. Whether the Blum/Goetz take has anything to do with that previous stalled incarnation, or its screenplay by Mark L. Smith (Vacancy, The Hole 3D) remains to be seen.

There's no release date that we know of yet, but Blumhouse projects tend to move quickly. We may see more Martyrs a lot sooner than we thought.