The Last Exorcism: Part II Director Headed To Different Dimensions In Thriller Pivot
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I doubt I’ll find any contrarians arguing that The Last Exorcism: Part II isn’t one of the dumbest and most oxymoronic film titles in cinema’s history, to say nothing of the actual film itself. But I guess we can’t lay all that blame at the feet of director Ed Gass-Donnelly, who was simply trying to document what was presumably the actual last exorcism. (Except for all those other movies about exorcisms.) Gass-Donnelly is headed in a different direction for his fourth feature, a sci-fi thriller called Pivot.
Leaving the world of demons and religion behind, Gass-Donnelly will also be writing Pivot, which sounds like it might straddle the line of coherent storytelling. The titular verb refers to jumping in between parallel universes — something we’re all very familiar with — and the scientist who invents a device that allows him to do just that. Problems arise when his wife is killed, which means if the scientist wants to be with her again, he has to head to a different universe where she’s alive and then kill the parallel version of himself. Where’s TimeCop when you need him?
“A high-quality concept like Pivot is exactly the type of project we were looking for,” said producers Jim Seibel and Bill Johnson, co-owners of Lotus Entertainment, the same company responsible for the beyond-boring adaptation The Host and the upcoming “Arnold Schwarzenegger raises a zombie” flick Maggie. They’re also behind Craig Zobel’s upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller Z for Zachariah with Chris Pine. These are guys who know high concepts when they’re transported to different universes and shown them. Executive producing will be Lotus’ D.J. Gugenheim and Ara Keshishian.
Hailing from Canada, Gass-Donnelly is also known for his theater work, though the previously mentioned horror sequel is definitely his biggest project to date. He has a handful of short films behind him, as well as his multi-storyline debut, 2007’s This Beautiful City. My favorite of his three films, however, is 2010’s Small Town Murder Songs, which follows Peter Stormare as a police chief in a Mennonite community in Ontario who is investigating the town’s first ever murder. At only 75 minutes long, it’s quite a ride into darkness. Check out the trailer below.
There’s no telling when this project will get off the ground, as Gass-Donnelly obviously has yet to produce a script for it. Here’s hoping Lotus pulls some strings to get a couple of familiar faces in the lead roles.
