The Steamboat Willie horror movie Screamboat is setting sail in just a couple short weeks, and star David Howard Thornton presents a brand new fresh look at the movie this week.

Screamboat will be released only in theaters on April 2, 2025 from Iconic Events Releasing. Check out our exclusive sneak peek below, which features new footage from the movie.

David Howard Thornton teases, “I hope you all are laughing and screaming and just having a wonderful time. And remember boys and girls… a scream is a wish your heart makes.”

Get your tickets to Screamboat now!

In the film, “Be our guest on a NYC ferry ride that turns into a hilarious nightmare when a mischievous mouse named Steamboat Willie becomes a monstrous reality. As passengers set sail, their trip turns deadly when the tiny terror unleashes murder and mayhem.”

From the producers of Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, Screamboat is written and directed by Steven LaMorte (The Mean One). Quantum Creation FX, Inc. (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) created the creature from designs by concept artist Christian Cordella (Spider-Man: No Way Home).

The cast includes Allison Pittel (Stream), Amy Schumacher (The Mean One), Jesse Posey (Selena), Jesse Kove (Cobra Kai), Kailey Hyman (Terrifier 2), Rumi C Jean-Louis (Hightown), Jarlath Conroy (George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead), and Charles Edwin Powell (The Exorcist III), with cameos from Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf), Brian Quinn (Impractical Jokers), and stand-up comedian Joe DeRosa (Better Call Saul).

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Veteran actor Brad Dourif may have earned a reputation for playing depraved sociopaths over his extensive career, but his feature debut role of Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest earned him an Oscar nomination at the young age of 24.

A distinct voice, impressive intensity, and a dynamic range have made Dourif a bit of a chameleon, making him one of the best actors of all time whose talents often go overlooked.

From sweet, quiet roles like Billy Bibbit to the grizzled yet morally pure Doc Cochran of Deadwood, Dourif can deftly handle it all. But it’s his high-intensity style that makes him so effective in horror, above all.

While he’s semi-retired now, save for mostly voice-acting work as a certain beloved horror icon, we look back at Brad Dourif’s 10 most memorable genre roles in celebration of his birthday on March 18.

Eyes of Laura Mars – Tommy Ludlow

Based on a treatment/source story by horror master John Carpenter, this murder mystery followed a photographer that develops an ability to see through the eyes of a killer. Dourif plays Ludlow, a colleague of Laura’s who is arrested and accused of being the killer. Ludlow is a troubled character and it’s easy to see why he’d be a great red herring, and Dourif handles the role of creep quite well. Eccentric and entertaining, it became rare where Dourif plays a character that appears more menacing than he actually is.

Dune – The Mentat Piter De Vries

A role that Dourif didn’t even want to accept initially, out of fear of being typecast as the sociopath. David Lynch eventually convinced him to take the part, and he dove headfirst into researching the character and what made him tick. A twisted sadist, Dourif nails De Vries, even when the rest of the film didn’t fare as well critically or in terms of box office. It’s no wonder why Dourif would be cast in this type of role again, just as he feared, and that David Lynch would hire him again in Blue Velvet.

Graveyard Shift – Tucker Cleveland

Reception on this ‘80s Stephen King adaptation is typically ice cold or nostalgic warmth, but no matter which team you’re on there’s no arguing that the best part is Brad Dourif as Tucker Cleveland. He’s not even a lead character, but he steals every single scene he’s in as the exterminator that takes his job way too seriously. With bug-eyed intensity, Tucker Cleveland is operating on an entirely different level than just about everyone else in the film, and Dourif’s scene-chewing is so off the rails great that it elevates an otherwise unmemorable horror movie.

Death Machine – Jack Dante

Look, Death Machine is by no means a good movie. It’s frankly kind of terrible. It’s still worth seeing though, for Dourif’s unhinged, fully unleashed performance as deranged weapons designer and lead developer Jack Dante. Dante builds a cybernetically enhanced super soldier and unleashes it upon the executives that want to terminate his project and job in homicidal rage. It’s cheesy, and the horror references are shoehorned, but Dourif portraying the homicidal maniac with reckless abandon is so much fun.

The Exorcist III – James Venamun/The Gemini Killer

This sequel holds its own with the first film for many reasons, but most of it can be attributed to Brad Dourif’s turn as the unnerving Gemini Killer. Dourif switches from cool intelligence to fevered murderer in seconds with effortless ease, and his monologues in the film are some of the absolute best scenes. That he’s going toe to toe with the likes of George C. Scott and Scott Wilson makes his performance even more impressive.

The Lord of the Rings – Grima Wormtongue

As the only human character of the trilogy to turn evil, Grima Wormtongue is a bit of a terrible creep. Dourif nearly didn’t get the part. After auditioning five times, he lost the role to another actor who then backed out. That actor’s loss makes it our gain with Dourif in the role. Borrowing from childhood memories of getting bullied in boarding school, Dourif found a way to connect with a character that didn’t seem very relatable. He stayed in character on set so fully that when Peter Jackson heard his actual accent in between takes, he thought Dourif was joking around. In such a large, grand-sweeping epic, Grima Wormtongue is a small piece of the puzzle. But Dourif made him memorable.

Urban Legend – Michael McDonnell, Gas Station Attendant

Dourif’s role in this ‘90s slasher is really more of a cameo, so minimal and brief, but he’s so effective in it that it’s absolutely worth mentioning. It’s the perfect example of how he can develop a character from so little, his stutter and mannerisms making him simultaneously intimidating and empathetic. While Michelle Mancini might have been afraid of him that stormy night, he was just trying to warn her of the doom that awaited her in her own back seat. His character’s fate is revealed in a background news report, and thanks to Dourif’s performance, you actually care.

The X-Files: “Beyond the Sea” – Luther Lee Boggs

The relationship between death row criminal Luther Lee Boggs and Agent Scully was reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, except Boggs was a high strung manic as opposed to the cool intellectual Lecter. Executive Producer Chris Carter and writer Glen Morgan felt it was vital for Brad Dourif to play the part, though the actor wanted more than what the show’s budget allowed. Willing to give up script fees to get Dourif into the part, Carter called up the president of Twentieth Century Fox on Thanksgiving Day to get the okay. It worked. Only someone like Dourif could make a killer like Boggs relatable and human, even with manic tendencies.

Halloween – Sheriff Lee Brackett

If there’s any character that Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake and sequel really improves upon over the original, it’s Sheriff Lee Brackett. That’s because he’s played by the amazing Brad Dourif. Even better is that Dourif gets to play against type here as the dutiful sheriff and doting father of Annie. There’s no trace of the sociopath that Dourif typically gets typecast as; just an honest, loving single father doing the best he can. It’s Sheriff Lee Brackett’s character that you truly invest in, and Dourif’s performance during an emotional scene in Halloween II is downright devastating. Even if you hate Zombie’s take on Michael Myers’ story, it’s impossible to hate what Dourif brought to the film.

Child’s Play – Chucky/Charles Lee Ray

This one is a complete no-brainer, as we have Brad Dourif to thank for turning Charles Lee Ray/Chucky into a horror icon who has endured throughout the decades. Yet, he almost didn’t get the part, due to filming Mississippi Burning at the time of Child’s Play casting and production. Someone else got the role, did the whole movie, and then tanked during test screenings; he’d taken Chucky too far into comedic territory right off the bat. Dourif, being Tom Holland’s first choice anyway, understood the right balance of serious and camp, making Chucky the iconic killer that he is today. He went on to voice the character in every single installment in the original Child’s Play franchise, as well as in all three seasons of the “Chucky” television series.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 23, 2018.

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Meghann Fahy (“The White Lotus”) and Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) star as a budding couple embarking on a first date that goes terribly awry thanks to a twisty murder plot in Happy Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon’s thriller Drop. 

The suspenseful thriller sets its whodunnit in motion when widowed mother Violet begins receiving mysterious airdrops on her phone, lighthearted memes at first that quickly snowball into sinister threats, prompting Violet to commit murder before her loved ones suffer the price.

Landon, speaking with Bloody Disgusting at SXSW for the film’s premiere, shared the true origins that inspired Drop. He explains, “Our producers were on vacation; they’re in a restaurant, and they started getting all of these mysterious airdrops from somebody in the restaurant. They could not figure it out. They never figured it out. They never solved it, but that’s when they were like, ‘This is like a great premise for a movie.’ They approached Chris [Roach] and Jill [Jacobs], our writers, and said, ‘Here’s the threadbare idea. Go.’

“They went off and came up with this very classic thriller concept. Then they wrote a first draft, and then the producers brought that draft to me and said, ‘We think that there’s a movie in here somewhere.’ I read it really fast because I thought it was a really fun script, but it was great because there was still a lot of work to do. A lot of things to solve, which is my favorite thing to do: roll up my sleeves as a writer and put that hat on. The three of us got together and worked really closely on the script. It was such a joy to work with them.”

(from left) Violet (Meghann Fahy) and Henry (Brandon Sklenar) in Drop, directed by Christopher Landon.

One huge piece of the puzzle to solve was maintaining momentum in the pressure cooker scenario. Landon tells BD, “That was one of the big challenges of the movie, how do we continue to cast suspicion on a lot of different people and make them feel like credible suspects? How do you keep subverting expectations? I think also one of the challenges here, and it was something that I was really deeply involved in, was in the original script, there were a lot of different motivations and a lot of different things happening that for me didn’t land quite right. It was just about making sure that motivations were clean, that they made sense, that they tracked so that if you do go back and watch the movie a second time, you’re going to see like, oh, okay, now this all makes sense. There are a lot of hidden things in the movie that people will miss. If they go back and watch it, they’ll see a lot more.”

Drop also marks a departure from Landon’s recent genre-mashup output, in what his husband lovingly and humorously refers to as his “grown-up” movie. The more sophisticated and simple concept was a huge part of the appeal for the filmmaker. He explains, “I think what I was more conscious of was wanting to make something that I think was less of a mash-up and more straightforward. I think for a lot of filmmakers, every project that we tackle is a reaction to the thing we did before. I was reacting to a movie that I didn’t even make but was supposed to. It was the best version of kismet where I had this project. It really was a great sandbox for me to work out a lot because I’m always kind of wrestling and dealing with my stuff. I’m sorry I drag millions of people along with me into my therapy sessions. But that’s what it was for me. I was really excited to make something that was darker and heavier, and a little more emotional, but still manages to find the light. I always like to have humor in everything I do, so I still found that here. It’s just not as broad as those other movies.”

Landon continues, “We live in an age where we’re dealing with a lot of movies that have these enormous production budgets and so many visual effects, and all this stuff that’s getting thrown at the audience. For me, sometimes there’s just something impossibly magical and enthralling about two people just at a table. The stakes can still be so high, even though your environment and the amount of characters you’re interacting with is so minimal. I saw Red Eye multiple times in the theater. Again, sort of going full circle kismet, I did not get to make the Wes Craven movie that I thought I was going to make.“

The pared-back thriller pays homage to the suspense greats, from Alfred Hitchcock to Brian De Palma to Wes Craven, and sets up a tension-fueled whodunnit that takes place almost exclusively within an upscale restaurant on the 38th floor of a Chicago high-rise. Palate, the film’s fictional restaurant, becomes a character in itself because so much of the film is set there. While it’s not surprising that production built the setting from scratch, what is surprising is that it was fully functional. As in, Palate even served tasty food that not even the actors could resist, and it required careful planning for the sake of continuity.

“We built a 12,000-square-foot restaurant,“ Landon reveals. “We had 100 extras. We had to train an entire staff. We had actual food. We had a chef who made food. We created a full menu of very specific dishes, and then they had to go and create. I don’t even know what they were made of, but they were fake versions of our dishes that look photoreal. We vacillated between those because you don’t want a set that stinks of food all day and is gross. We also needed some people to be eating. It was such a crazy, elaborate operation. Hats off to our AD department because they had so much work to do in terms of tracking. Also, we had to manage continuity. Who’s getting up? Who’s getting what? What table’s being seated? What table’s done? What course are they on? Every single table had to be mapped out. It was mind-blowing. There were giant graphs and charts and all kinds of crazy shit that was done.

“When you watch the movie, it is seamless. The food was good. I had to stop Brandon from eating at a certain point because he would just keep going between takes. He would be like, ‘This is delicious.‘ He kept tucking into it. I was like, ‘Slow down. You’ve had five steaks.’

The restaurant set piece wasn’t just functional to create an immersive restaurant experience. Landon details, “It was 16 feet off the ground. We had to build an elevated set for a couple of reasons. One, because there’s a sequence later in the movie that requires the height. It was also like a big technical feat because they built this massive tunnel through the middle of the set so that we could move cranes and other gear from one side of the restaurant to the other side of the restaurant. It was a marvel. I was blown away by this thing. It was really cool. We had to get a certain amount of clearance so that we could do certain things with the actors after.”

“Then,“ Landon teases of a stunt-heavy third act, “we had to build an alternate facade of the building so that we could hang actors on wires even higher than that. Meghann was way up there. She was so brave because I was scared looking at it.”

Drop releases in theaters on April 11, 2025.

RELATED: Catch up on all our SXSW 2025 coverage here.

The post Christopher Landon’s ‘Drop’ Built Fully Functioning Restaurant for Immersive Thriller [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Less than a week after it was announced that Phoebe Dynevor will star with Jake Gyllenhaal in M. Night Shyamalan‘s upcoming next film, the “Bridgerton” actress is adding another genre project to her resume.

Deadline reports that Dynevor will star opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Pendulum from producer Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream).

Black Swan and The Boogeyman screenwriter Mark Heyman will make his feature directorial debut from his own script.

Described as a “terrifying new genre film,” Pendulum follows young couple Patrick and Abigail on a journey to a new-age retreat in New Mexico, drawn by the possibility of healing after a traumatic event.

Patrick is willing to do anything to help his wife but becomes distrustful of the retreat’s enigmatic leader even as Abigail falls under her spell. As paranoia builds, the couple must determine if the group’s unconventional spiritual practices offer genuine healing – or mask a terrifying truth that threatens to consume them both.

Aronofsky will produce through his Protozoa outfit along with Jacob Jaffke (X, Dream Scenario) for Motel Mojave and Dave Caplan (Longlegs, The Monkey) for C2, which will also fully finance.

Principal photography will start this month in New Mexico. UTA Independent Film Group, CAA Media Finance, and WME Independent hold the domestic rights.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in ‘Killer Heat’

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Finn Wolfhard (“Stranger Things”), Billy Bryk (Ghostbusters: Afterlife), and Fred Hechinger (Fear Street Part One: 1994) are bringing Hell of a Summer on tour.

They’ll appear in-person at the following advance screenings:

• March 24 – Harkins Tempe Marketplace – Phoenix, AZ
• March 25 – Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar – Austin, TX
• March 27 – Belcourt Theatre – Nashville, TN
• March 28 – Plaza Theatre – Atlanta, GA

Bloody Disgusting is also presenting early screenings of the film in Chicago and Dallas on March 24.

Wolfhard and Bryk co-wrote and co-directed the slasher comedy in addition to appearing in it alongside Hechinger.

Abby Quinn (Knock at the Cabin), D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”), Pardis Saremi (“Death and Other Details”), Rosebud Baker (“Life & Beth”), and Adam Pally (Sonic the Hedgehog) round out the cast.

24-year-old camp counselor Jason Hochberg (Hechinger) arrives at Camp Pineway thinking his biggest problem is that he feels out of touch with his teenage co-workers. What he doesn’t know is that a masked killer is lurking on the campgrounds, brutally picking counselors off one by one.

Hell of a Summer opens in theaters on April 4 via Neon.

The post Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk, & Fred Hechinger Are Taking Their Slasher Comedy ‘Hell of a Summer’ on Tour appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.