One’s Comic, One’s Tragic – Two Very Different Movies Featuring Marvel Stars Deal With Facing The Past
There is not a lot tying The Killer’s Game and Starve Acre together, barring that both released trailers on Wednesday.
But it is nearly true that both movies star actors who have appeared in Marvel/MCU movies, so we’ll go with that. In The Killer’s Game, Guardians of the Galaxy co-stars Dave Bautista and Pom Klementieff and Iron Man 3 baddie Ben Kingsley star in a comedy of errors (and terrors) that results when hitman Joe Flood (Bautista) is diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to take out a contract on himself.
To insure that the hit is carried out, Flood places the contract in the hands of someone who has every reason to want him dead, a former associate played by Kementieff. But of course, things go sideways, and when the doctor calls and says he misdiagnosed our hero, Flood tries to call of the contract. When the hitmen after him also start targeting his ex (Sofia Boutella) he decides to fight back and hit the hitmen.
Ben Kingsley, Terry Crews, Drew McIntyre and Scott Adkins also star in the film, which was adapted from a book written by Jay R. Bonansing. Rand Ravich wrote the script and J.J. Perry directs.
The Killer’s Game will hit theaters on September 13th.
Matt Smith, best known for his television work on House of the Dragon and Doctor Who, but who also played Milo in Sony’s Marvel-adjacent film Morbius, takes the lead in the 1970s-set atmospheric horror Starve Acre from Brainstorm Media.
Smith is joined by Rings of Power star Morfydd Clark, and they play parents whose son begins acting strangely, causing them to “unwittingly allow dark and sinister forces into their home, awakening a long-dormant ancient evil rooted deep in the countryside.”
The folk horror film was written and directed by Daniel Kokotajio, who won a BAFTA nomination for his first film, Apostasy. Starve Acre premiered at the BFI London film festival last October to critical raves.
Starve Acre also stars Erin Richards, Robert Emms and Sean Gilder. The film will be in theaters and available on demand on July 26th, 2024, and will open in the UK and Ireland on September 6th of this year.
