Continuing its push into the genre space, Italy’s Indiana Production has announced it is set to produce action chiller “Piranhas in Rome –The Great Horror Beauty,” from a screenplay by ace Rome-based writing duonicola Guaglianone and Menotti, who penned hit superhero movie “They Call Me Jeeg.”
While its director is still being decided, the “Piranhas in Rome” scribes are promoting the project that is set in an “apocalyptic and aquatic” Eternal City “as it has never seen before,” according to a synopsis.
Menotti (which is the pen name of comic book artist and screenwriter Roberto Marchionni) provided PvNew with exclusive concept art – see image above – for the live-action project in which predatory freshwater fish invade Rome by entering the city’s water supply system through the Tiber river.
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The film’s heroic protagonists are Ilenia, a policewoman hellbent on doing anything to save the Italian capital, even if it means breaking the rules; an influencer named Baby; and Rowena, a Filipino fishmonger who has a degree in marine biology. These three women join forces to save the situation.
Guaglianone and Menotti described “Piranhas” as conceptually different from Netflix shark thriller “Under Paris,” which according to Guaglianone “just apes American action movies.”
Though “Piranhas” will similarly make use of U.S. action movie genre tropes, the film will also have a very culturally specific contemporary Rome-set storyline.
“We wanted to mix it up with the spirit of the great Italian comedies of Italian cinema’s glory days by depicting how Italians really react to a disaster of this type,” Guaglianone said. One strand of their tale is a scathing social satire about “a deeply rooted system of corruption in Rome that immediately begins to cynically exploit the piranhas’ invasion,” he added.
“The carnivorous fish really provide a pretext for us to look at ourselves in the mirror,” Menotti said.
For Indiana Production, which is part of rising European indie studio Vuelta Group, “Piranhas” marks a further step toward “developing a strand of quality genre movies,” according to Daniel Campos Pavoncelli, who heads the company’s film and TV unit.
Indiana recently announced its venture into the comedy space by forging a multi-picture deal and a creative collaboration pact with multi-hyphenate Gennaro Nunziante,who has directed top local hits including “Quo Vado,” the Italian comedy about job security that is the country’s all-time highest grosser.
“We are delighted to be able to work with Nicola Guaglianone and Menotti on this great project that represents an absolute novelty within genre filmmaking in Italy thanks to their brilliant screenplay full of pop, satirical and horror elements,” Campos Pavoncelli added. Guaglianone’s shingle Miyagi Entertainment is also on board as a producer on the film.
“They Call Me Jeeg,” which was penned by Guaglianone and Menotti and directed by Gabriele Mainetti, is considered a game-changer in Italian cinema. The genre-bender, about a two-bit criminal loser who stumbles upon his superpowers and learns to care about humanity, became Italy’s 2016 sleeper hit, pulling in 1 million admissions locally before launching from dozens of festivals and selling widely around the world.
