The name Ben Wheatley would have meant very little to most people just a few short years ago, but after the incredible run of “Down Terrace,” “Kill List” and “Sightseers,” his is a name that almost every film fan gets excited to hear. It won’t be long before we get to see “A Field in England,” and he also directed a segment of the upcoming horror anthology “The ABCs of Death,” but Wheatley is a prolific filmmaker and it seems that every few weeks we’re hearing about another new project. And the new one this week is the brilliantly titled “Mega Evil Motherfuckers.”While discussing previously mentioned projects including “Freakshift,” “I, Macrobane” and “Two For Hell,” Wheatley dropped into a conversation with The Hitlist his plan to work on the claymation/stop-motion animated film “underneath” the other projects. “We’re half-way through the script on that,” said Wheatley. “We’re talking to animation houses and guys about that…it’s a whole pool of people in the UK who have done ‘Frankenweenie‘ and ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox‘ and stuff, so the talents all there to do it. It’s gonna be really, really violent. But funny.”
Sounds intriguing to us, and certainly something that Wheatley could work on at the same time as grappling with bigger projects like “Freakshift,” and the two years of associated post-production that Wheatley believes that will bring. It’s refreshing to have someone so overflowing with creativity and with such an eagerness to get his ideas made, no matter the budget. With Steven Soderbergh retiring we may have found his successor in terms of someone who’s marrying quantity with quality. It just so happens though, that this guy has his heart firmly in genre filmmaking.
