Mark Webber, the actor most familiar as "the talent" Stephen Stills in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, didn't have just one breakout at this year's Sundance Film Festival, but three. He had supporting roles in the female-led comedies For A Good Time Call… (coming out next week!) and Save The Date (coming later this year), as well as writing, directing and starring in The End of Love, in which he plays a version of himself opposite his own son, Isaac. And even though none of those films have quite hit theaters, he's riding that low-key wave of buzz to something he's yet to have for most audiences: a starring role.
Daniel Stamm, the director of 2010's sleeper hit The Last Exorcism, is preparing his remake of the Thai thriller 13: Game of Death, and he wants Webber to star in it. According to Variety the remake will go by the name Angry Little God, but will feature the same basic scenario of a man who's in over his head financially and signs up for a game show in which he can win $6 million if he can execute 13 different tasks. As you might guess, it gets a lot more complicated than there, and apparently there's a limit to what humans can and will do for a major cash windfall. Writing about this remake, Film School Rejects called the original "a fantastic exploration of what we’ll do to get money (and the spotlight)." Sounds like the kind of themes that ought to translate over to America, all right.
IM Global will finance the film, but the Weinstein Company's Dimension Films will distribute it, which is great news for any film with a horror bent-- Dimension knows how to get the scary stuff out there. And with Webber in the lead role, a guy who you automatically sympathize with even though you know nothing about him, the terrifying trials of Angry Little God might start feeling a little too real-- probably exactly the way Stamm wants it.
