“You’ve asked me about this in the past—‘What’s your next project?’—and it never ends up being the one that I told you about!” protests director Jake West (pictured) when Fango catches up with him during his brief pause between finishing up postproduction on his new film DOGHOUSE and jetting out to Cannes. Nevertheless, West is happy to talk about some possible future collaborations with DOGHOUSE scripter Daniel Schaffer and producer Terry Stone.
“We’d like to see if we can get them off the ground, but obviously we won’t quite know the lay of the land until we see how DOGHOUSE does in the UK next month,” he continues; the film (in which a group of vacationing men stumble upon a rural town where all the women have become man-killing cannibals) opens there June 12. “Because people are only going to want to give me more money if DOGHOUSE is a success. If it’s not, then I’ll go back to the drawing board.”
DOGHOUSE is West’s first feature since helming PUMPKINHEAD: ASHES TO ASHES for the Sci Fi Channel in 2006. The director was introduced to Schaffer’s cult comic book DOGWITCH last year and subsequently to the writer himself, who was on the DOGHOUSE set to provide script advice and rewrites when needed. The film stars SEVERANCE’s Danny Dyer, DOCTOR WHO’s Noel Clarke and INKHEART’s Stephen Graham, with Britain’s reigning horror queen Emily Booth (from West’s EVIL ALIENS) as one of the “zombirds.” Having wrapped postproduction last Friday, the director will concentrate in Cannes on finding titles for his Nucleus Films DVD label, and setting up meetings to promote the new West/Schaffer projects.
“I’m very excited about doing more projects with Dan, because we worked so well together on this film,” West says. “We really clicked, and have a simpatico thing going on. It would be delightful if this would be the first of many, but like with all film projects, you never know what’s going to happen!”
