The Queensland screenwriters who contributed to surprise international hit film Bait 3D and local horror film Acolytes have taking their first step toward producing their own work with the upcoming release of short film Huge.
The dark satire has been released under Shayne Armstrong and S.P. Krause’s new production company, Rarer Monsters (which also includes producers Charles Mitchell and Lachlan Madsen) and the duo plan to begin production on their first feature-film, a supernatural-horror feature titled The Contents in 2013.
“Writing and making Huge came about from a combination of the impatience of waiting about for other people to bring our next script to the screen and a dissatisfaction of seeing our scripts sometimes damaged in development and production,” Krause said in a statement. “By taking more control of writing, directing and producing the short, we had something shot in months instead of years. And of course if anything is less than we hoped, we only have ourselves to blame.”
Their production company has also produced the short sci-fi-thriller Rarer Monsters. All three productions have been written by the duo with Krause also directing.
Armstrong and Krause’s first feature, horror-thriller Acolytes, was released in 2008. They were credited with 'additional writing' on Bait 3D, which has grossed more than $US25 million in China. However, it is understood that much of their work on Bait 3D – which treated the film as a serious horror – was not used in the final over-the-top version of the film.
Huge will premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival this November. It follows a comedian Barry Branch (John Batchelor), a man who has lost a massive amount of weight in order to be taken seriously as an actor, as he makes a deal with an unlikely devil via his conniving agent Liz (Robyn Moore) and, in the process, sees a century-old conspiracy involving the untimely deaths of over-sized comedians in Hollywood.
Huge was shot in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast with a local cast and crew for a budget of approximately $25,000.