inmate profile: Andre Royo

With the World Premiere of The Asylum's Bigfoot going down this Saturday night at 9 o'clock on Syfy, it's time to turn the Committed spotlight on the talent behind this impending masterpiece, and there's a lot of talent to look at. The film stars Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch, Mega Piranha) and Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family, Corvette Summer), both of whom are well known to just about everyone who's ever owned a television set, but this cast is deep, so I thought we'd take a closer look at some of the film's supporting players, starting with the awesome Andre Royo.

Royo was born in the Bronx in the hot summer of 1968. He didn't start acting until his thirties, but once he did, it was near-impossible not to take notice. His first feature film was John Singleton's Shaft remake, but it was TV where Royo really made a name for himself: besides guest spots in such varied shows as Law & Order SVU, CSI Miami, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes, Fringe, Criminal Minds and others, it was his portrayal of "Bubbles" in 52 episodes of The Wire - you know, the greatest TV show EVER? - that cemented this fine actor's place in the hall of fame. "Bubbles" - for my money - is one of the greatest characters ever committed to any screen, big or small, and 100% of that credit is due to Royo's cripplingly vulnerable and overwhelmingly empathetic portrayal of a man driven to bottom by his own vices. For real, the guy should have a shelf full of awards.

Since god decided to show his disdain for us and The Wire ceased airing, Royo has stayed busy as ever, appearing in films like James Gunn's Super - one of my top 10 theatrical releases of last year - and the George Lucas-produced, Tuskeegee-airman action-drama Red Tails alongside Terence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

After Bigfoot, Royo will next be seen in the horror films Hellbenders and The Collection, drama The Miracle of Spanish Harlem, the action flick Shoedog with Ethan Hawke, Heather Graham, Sam Shepard and Kris Kristofferson, and the thriller Remnants with Edward Furlong, William Baldwin and the very lovely and talented Monica Keena.

Andre Royo is an incredibly potent actor and his presence in Bigfoot is sure to escalate what is already one of the summer's most eagerly-anticipated entertainment events. Tune in for yourself and see this Saturday, 9 o'clock, on Syfy.

The Asylum's BIGFOOT Gets a SyFy Premiere Date

Buzz has been building for a while about The Asylum's next SyFy Original Movie, Bigfoot, mostly because of its AMAZING cast: Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch, Mega Piranha), Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family), Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks, my dreams beginning in 1989), Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati, Head of the Class), Andre Royo (The Wire, Super), Alice Cooper (duh) and Billy Idol (double-duh). Whew; it's gonna be like the wackiest episode of Hollywood Squares ever all up on your television screen. And as if all this star power wasn't enough, the film is being directed by Academy-Award nominated actor and Asylum vet Bruce Davison (MegaFault, Titanic II) from a script by Micho Rutare and Brian Brinkman, the team behind Meteor Apocalypse. This could sincerely be the biggest project yet from The Asylum.


And now we know when we get to lay our greedy little eyes on it: Saturday, June 30th, 9 pm on SyFy. No word on a DVD release as of yet - my guess would be by the end of the year - but have no fear, this being an instant classic, I'm sure SyFy will rerun the shit out of it for decades to come.
 

A Closer Look at BIGFOOT...

What with those great pics released to Entertainment Weekly, the cat is out of the bag on The Asylum's upcoming SyFy original movie, Bigfoot. All there is to know about the plot is that some dudes are hunting Bigfoot, but thanks to IMDB we know a great deal about just who is involved, and it's pretty awesome:

Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch, MegaPiranha), Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family), Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks), Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati, Rubin and Ed, Head of the Class), rockers Alice Cooper and BIlly Idol, Andre Royo ("Bubbles" from The Wire, no shit!!!) as well as Bruce Davison (MegaFault, Titanic II), who's also directing the film from a script by Micho Rutare and Brian Brinkman, who together previously wrote Dragonquest and Meteor Apocalypse; Rutare also wrote the story for Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, while Brinkman has worked in the editorial department on a handful of Asylum films and has appeared as an actor in three. 

Translation: there are some seasoned pros at play in this one, promising an all-Asylum take on the ripe legend of Bigfoot. No air-date as of yet, but probably sometime in the next couple of months this one will grace TV screens nationwide. As soon as more details are available, I'll post 'em up. Until then, salivate along with me over the greatness to-be that is Bigfoot!

BIGFOOT Pics in Entertainment Weekly!

Been waiting on some official word on Bigfoot for a while now, and here it is, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, you know, the largest entertainment magazine on the planet?!

I'll let the article explain itself, but suffice it to say, 6 words capture my excitement for this film: "Danny Bonaduce, Barry Williams, Sherilyn Fenn." More details as they're available...

Interesting News From the SyFy Upfronts

So, the SyFy upfronts went down this week - the event where they announce all their upcoming programming - and while there's lots of interesting stuff here, the most interesting has to be under the heading of Saturday Original Movies, where they reveal not one but TWO new Asylum projects for the fall.

Project One: "Zombie Apocalypse (working title) -- October 2011 -- Months after a zombie plague has wiped out 90 percent of the American population, a small group of survivors fight their way cross-country to a rumored refuge on the island of Catalina" 

Project Two: "Bigfoot - 2012 -- 1970's pop culture icons Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family) and Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch) face off in the hunt for the legendary mountain creature."

Do I even need to mention how awesome both of these films sound? I mean, really, a freaking bigfoot movie with Greg Brady and Danny Partridge? If my soul has a tattoo, I'm pretty sure it's an image from this movie.


No pages or mentions of these over at The Asylum site for the moment, but I'm sure more information will be coming soon. With the recent announcement of Naomi Selfman's Barely Legal and info on Born Bad, the second half of the Asylum's year is starting to come into focus. And so far, it looks pretty awesome!

observation notes: Mega Piranha

"They were created to save mankind. Something went wrong."

Something always does.

The Asylum's answer to Alexandre Aja's mega-hit Piranha 3D, released months in advance of the big-budget gore-fest, ups the ante infinitely by making the hungry little Amazonian buggers not so little at all.

The film opens with the genre-tested maxim that you can let a hot chick lead you to water, but it's only going to get you eaten, in this case by a school of enraged and rapidly-growing Venezuelan piranha. From these horny bathers the school moves on to topless party-boaters and a pair of sleazy politicians, one of whom is the ridiculously corpulent ambassador to the United States. Well, you know we don't play that shit, so cue special forces operative and The Asylum's #1 badass, Paul Logan. While he's amassing weapons of massive-piranha annihilation, former pop sensation and COMMITTED-favorite Tiffany, starring here as some sort of fish scientist, along with her team of other fish scientists - the same team, as fate would have it, whose DNA tampering is responsible for this mega-problem - is discovering the danger for themselves. Tiffany, ever the moralist, breaks protocol to alert PL to the danger and enlist his help against both the Mega Piranha and the local, typically-stubborn and lazily-tyrannical military honchos. PL, at the behest of CIA director Greg Brady, decides to trust Tiff and go rogue, and it isn't long before this decision proves fruitful: they have to admit the piranha are getting mega, getting mega all the time, and, naturally, heading for every river system in the western hemisphere.

What ensues from here is a two-way struggle for our heroes, against both the mega piranha and the egotistical lieutenant seemingly hellbent on making a bad situation worse for no reason whatsoever. It's all spoilers from here on in, so I'll back off but to say it also becomes a struggle against time, because there's no ceiling to just how mega these piranha can get; by the end of the day, they'll be the size of whales - fucking whales - with no sign of cellular stabilization in sight. Meaning they could grow to the size of what? The Queen Mary? A skyscraper? Cleveland? That's fucking Mega, folks.

As for the FX, Tiny Juggernaut once again brings home the bacon, making the piranha equally fearsome and ferocious, no matter what their size, though things get proportionally more awesome the bigger they get, especially once they start stampeding and going all kamikaze and shit on coastal communities. Writer/Director and Asylum-staple Eric Forsberg (Sex Pot, Alien Abduction) shoots this one a little differently than other Asylum films, choosing a style slightly reminiscent of Crank or Smokin' Aces with ample title cards and McG-esque color schemes and quick cuts, and even motion-tampering. The fight scenes - that is the fights between PL and the MP - are especially cool, with an extra tip of the hat to the kick-fighting scene, and there are a few death scenes a la Deep Blue Sea that nearly made me spill my SoCo and Sprite (I'm amidst a no-beer bet with my wife).

As for performances, you guys know how I feel about Tiffany. I think she's the greatest thing to happen to the genre since Roy Scheider, I honestly do, and I think she's got a lot of room to grow the more and more films of this ilk she makes (re: Necrosis, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid ((fingers x-ed))), but here, well, how to say...let's just leave it at, I knew I was watching a pop star act.

Paul Logan, on the other hand, never plays an Asylum role he wasn't built for, and here is no exception. PL commands the screen with the prowess of a young Stallone and the steely gaze of Jason Statham. Charming, aggressive and snarky, and - I know I've said it before - but he's still got the best run of anyone in The Asylum's stable.

Rounding out the cast, as mentioned, is Greg "my name is Barry Williams, dammit" Brady as the CIA director. More often than not Greg's on screen by himself talking into a Blackberry, shot beneath blue or green lights, making him more than reminiscent of Howie Mandel in Little Monsters. But I didn't disbelieve him in the role, so that's something.

All in all, Mega Piranha isn't the best film The Asylum's made that starts with "Mega," but if you look away from some stilted dialogue and wordy scientific exposition, what you end up with is a fun, frightening Saturday night, and there ain't a damn thing wrong with that.