Luke Jaden
By Danny Fenster
A crew of local, independent film producers is scouting Detroit locales for a new shoot.
Josh Malerman, who's first novel "Bird Box" will be released May 13 by Harper Collins, wrote the film, called "Monsters."
Malerman is also the frontman for local rock group "The High Strung," whose single "The Luck You Got" is featured in Showtime's "Shameless."
He and the film crew plan to begin shooting mid-May.
Project backers describe Monsters as a "fantasy thriller" taking a new look at the standard haunted house story.
“We're all fans of the haunted house film, the story of a family moving in, experiencing oddities, getting scared, until they have to deal with the entity head on,” says Malerman. In the film, the haunted house appears as a main character.
"There is less dialog than most movies," says Josh Jones, a location scout. "It conveys what it wants to say through sights, sound, music and camera angles. Josh (Malerman) is such a fantastic writer," that he can pull such a stunt off, says Jones.
Luke Jaden is producing the film. He previously produced the documentary "Madman or Martyr?," about abolitionist John Brown, which starred Prison Break's Phillip Edward Van Lear and Tim Holmes, from "Oz: The Great & Powerful."
"This is a collaborative effort from a bunch of Michigan guys," says Jones, who says he linked up with both Malerman and Jaden through a network of mutual friends. "This is completely a passion project. It's funded independently; we are not using any state tax credits or anything."
