Simon Pegg To Headline Cast Of Horror Icons In The Gathering

Everybody’s favourite fanboy actor Simon Pegg is set to appear as The Devil alongside a slew of famed horror actors in ‘The Gathering,’ the film’s director Jon Keeyes has revealed.

As director, writer and producer of such underseen low-budget efforts as ‘Suburban Nightmare’ and ‘Living and Dying’ (nope, us neither), Keeyes himself is clearly far from a household name - yet Pegg, honorary horror royalty thanks to ‘Shaun of the Dead’ alone, is but one of the fan favourites he’s enlisted for his upcoming movie.

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If this was not enough, horror aficionados are sure to be very excited by the other names attached, as Keeyes tells Fangoria that ‘Re-Animator’ star Jeffrey Combs will appear as legendary horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, alongside David Naughton (‘An American Werewolf in London’) as that other great American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, and Doug Bradley (Pinhead of ‘Hellraiser’) in the role of ‘Dracula’ author Bram Stoker. 

Combs has portrayed Poe before in the ‘Masters of Horror’ TV movie ‘The Black Cat,’ and the stage play ‘Nevermore’ (both of which were directed by ‘Re-Animator’s Stuart Gordon).

Keeyes also hints at ‘major female names’ circling the role of ‘Frankenstein’ author Mary Shelley, plus a slew of well-loved genre stars filling out the cast:

"We’ve got Udo Kier (‘Blade’), Clint Howard (‘Evilspeak’), Robert Englund (‘A Nightmare of Elm Street’), Lin Shaye (‘Insidious’), Ashley Laurence (‘Hellraiser’), Gunnar Hansen (‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’), Bill Moseley (‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2’), Debbie Rochon (‘Tromeo and Juliet’) and William Sadler (‘Die Hard 2’) committed to do the movie—it’s a huge cast.”

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Naturally this leaves us with two major questions; first, what’s keeping Bruce Campbell so busy that he can’t do this (though, to be fair, there is that TV show 'Ash Vs. The Evil Dead'); and second, just what kind of film has Keeyes cooked up to hook such an ensemble? The director goes on to sum up Carl Kirshner’s script, and in truth, it does sound pretty enticing…

“On Halloween night, the devil brings together Mary Shelley, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe in purgatory to tell their best untold tales, the idea being that whoever has the best story of the night gets to leave purgatory forever. That’s the framing device around all the anthology stories within the film.”

'The Gathering' is provisionally set to shoot in May 2015 - by which time we'll have seen Pegg on the big screen once again in Terry Jones' 'Absolutely Anything,' due in cinemas Valentine's Day.

Pegg is also at work on ‘Mission: Impossible 5,’ due December 2015 - and then there’s his planned reunion with co-writer/director Edgar Wright and co-star Nick Frost, which the trio have confirmed, but we have heard precious little about thus far.

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Picture Credit: Universal, Anchor Bay