Fresh off the success of his feature debut Holy Shit!, writer and director Lukas Rinker is once again teaming up with production company Neopol Film and sales agency The Playmaker for a brand new POLAR BEAR ECO-HORROR (!!) titled Paws.
Variety revealed the news in an exclusive today, as well as giving us a pretty hefty Paws plot outline:
The film centers on young scientist Nook, who’s on board a research ship in the Arctic. Reformed oil billionaire Fox is funding the crews’ efforts to fight climate change. Just when Nook learns that Fox’s interest is not so much in saving the planet but exploring and claiming fresh oil fields, their ship crashes.
The crew search an abandoned Russian ghost-ship looking for a radio, but uncover a horrific threat: Inside the rusty trawler a monstrous polar bear mother has been trapped with her cub. Not only will the animal defend her nest but has grown very hungry and will seize the opportunity to feed on the survivors.
Meanwhile, Fox begins to drill for oil and sees Nook as a threat to his business. Nook radios for help, but only a squad of Russian mercenaries return her call, and they are also interested in the oil.
Producers Tonio Kellner, Andrea Simml and Jakob Zapf will be pitching Paws at the upcoming genre film market and networking initiative Frontières on May 20 and 21.
In an interview with Variety, Rinker spoke about what inspired him to make Paws and, not surprisingly for an eco-horror, the very real terror of climate change played a big part in it:
“The polar bear – the largest terrestrial predator on Earth – comes to mind as the natural monster to roam this setting, but it also is a perfect fit for my agenda – to condemn the never-ending destruction of nature. And have the people responsible eaten. […] I love genre and I love horror…Being trapped on an ice-field with no help in sight, freezing temperatures and a looming hungry monster – seemed very horrifying to me. And from the bears perspective, having your habitat exploited and melted away, with nothing you can do against those greedy intruders, is horrific.
And the best news of all? Paws’ Arctic antagonist will be, according to Rinker, an animatronic and not CGI. Apparently, the director hasn’t seen ‘one believable bear in a movie’ since and before Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant. We do hope that’s not shade at our dear friend Cocaine Bear, but if it is, we definitely want front-row tickets to THAT showdown.
We can say with absolute certainty that we will be watching Paws’ production progress very closely, so watch this space for updates – and check out this already-iconic poster:
