Ashleigh Hill-Buxton
If you’ve yet to hear about “The Temple” from any of our friends over at the various horror websites, here’s a bit of a rundown : Alex Greenfield and Michael K. Eitelman wrote the script for the film and it won Best Screenplay at Amazon Studios, the new film production arm of Amazon. Shortly thereafter, Greenfield witnessed the approval of his production proposal to give the duo a grant of $50k and the greenlight to make a motion comic of the script.
The synopsis :
A group of private-company mercenaries tracking a wanted terrorist through the no man’s land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are joined by an archaeologist from the British Museum when they find that their quarry has disappeared into the Safed Koh mountains to an ancient temple long thought to be nothing more than a legend. Hazarded by gunfire throughout the journey, the weary team finally finds the awe-inspiring ruin.
Empty and quiet, the stones inside are pockmarked by gunfire — whatever happened in this place, it was bad. Against the advice of both the archaeologist and his second-in-command, the leader of the team decides to stay in the temple to investigate.
What the men discover is an abattoir: not only the men attached to the terrorist, but bodies from dozens… even hundreds of years have been cast throughout the bowels of he ancient building. The longer the men stay in its winding halls, the more their behavior toward each other becomes aggressive and out-of-character. The more it becomes murderous. The archaeologist realizes that the temple itself — *herself* — is driving the men to violence. Like a Venus flytrap, the temple has always called men of war into her bosom and devoured them.
The men whose sanity remains intact begin a race against time to try and escape the temple before it drives them to madness, but they must stop their own commander from calling in reinforcements and feeding the temple more and more of the men she wants to consume.
The cast will be headed up by Christopher Showerman (“George of the Jungle 2”, “Big Game”) in the lead role of Derek Sommerholm, a US soldier torn between duty and fear as he and his unit encounter an ancient Lovecraftian horror with a taste for the souls of men.
Says Greenfield, “Showerman was the first actor I cast — indeed, he was part of the production plan I sent. We worked together on Street Warrior, this MMA movie I did for Spike TV a couple years ago and have been dying to do another project together since then. He’s perfect for the lead role of Derek Sommerholm.”
“Our voice director, Christian Davis put together an awesome team for the rest of the cast”, he continues.
The cast includes Bobby Ray Shafer (from TV’s “The Office”), Mike Chamberlain, Bess Harrison, Darin Cooper (“The Social Network”), Brian La Rosa (“Day of the Dead”) and Nicholas Kadi (“Sleeper Cell”).
“We’re shooting for December 15th to bring in the first cut and right now we’re in the thick of it. It’s a blast.”, says Greenfield.
Finally, here’s some concept drawings Greenfield has provided us with :
