The Kidd here...
Okay, admit it... many of you don't even know who Jim Gillespie is. You couldn't put a face to the name if you had a gun to your head, and you certainly couldn't recall the movies associated with him. I had to do my own research to get some more details on the guy, but Gillespie was the man behind the camera for the 90s slasher hit I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which tried to capitalize on all the interest in the genre that SCREAM generated at the time. If you recall, you could throw a rock during that period and hit a teen slasher horror flick... that's how many of them seemed to be rushing to theatres then. It's not a great film by any means, but, as someone right in that target age bracket back in '97, you really couldn't go wrong with a film that featured Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar then and there... even if it does have a killer fisherman.
Following I KNOW WHAT YOU DID, Gillespie wasn't involved with its less memorable sequel, and went on to make a pair of movies only a handful of people have seen - EYE SEE YOU, the Sylvester Stallone crime thriller that didn't see a limited U.S. release until three full years after its international run, and VENOM, a voodoo horror film that only took in $881, 779 at the box office. That last picture was back in 2005, meaning Gillespie hasn't directed a feature length film in eight years.
Well, someone must have really liked his earlier work, as Gillespie is heading back to the director's chair to helm TAKE DOWN from a script written by Alexander Ignon, who is best known for RANSOM. According to Variety, TAKE DOWN would showcase an international cast of teens sent away from their billionaire parents to a boarding school out in the middle of nowhere. A group of kidnappers take the school hostage though, and it's up to these kids to fight back against their captors. So kind of like TOY SOLDIERS, I guess.
No casting has taken place just yet, but if they get the right mix of youngsters for this, it could be fun on some level.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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