Adam Green, the filmmaker behind Hatchet and Frozen, says his completed survival thriller Ascent will never be released. The director recently revealed that the film was shot in Malta, but the production was allegedly left in financial chaos after a producer took the money and disappeared.
Our friends at Bloody Disgusting brought this story to our attention, pointing out Green’s appearance on the YouTube channel FanZcene Vids. During the conversation, Green also cleared up some confusion surrounding the project: despite its original announcement as a shark thriller, Ascent was never actually a shark movie. It was a hot air balloon thriller.
Green said,
“It was never a shark movie. But we don’t need to worry about it, because it’s never coming out. You’ll never see it. … The producers… I don’t want to name names… his name was Ryan Hamilton, he stole all the money and just disappeared. So, we actually filmed the whole thing in Malta. That was actually the same producer who f*cked everything up… he’s the one who announced it as the shark movie. He should’ve read it. It’s actually a hot air balloon movie.”
Green went on to describe the production as an incredible experience before explaining why audiences are unlikely to ever see the finished film.
“It was the craziest shoot ever, it was amazing. And then we left, got back to LA, and nobody ever got paid. They did that to four productions in one year. So they’ve been on the run. And when you’re talking about people in another country, trying to get any sort of legal justice is painful. So. Yeah. That one will never come out.”
These are Green’s allegations about the production and its producer. Bloody Disgusting notes that Hamilton was part of Simple House Films alongside Addam Bramich and Volodymyr Artemenko. The company also had another horror project, Zipline, on its slate.
What Was Adam Green’s Ascent About?
The first announcement referred to the film as a shark thriller, providing the following synopsis: A group of friends arrive in Europe for a glamorous but daring destination wedding. The fun and games turn into a nightmare when they find themselves precariously suspended above shark infested waters and in a battle for survival. Later, we saw a different synopsis that removed the reference to sharks and instead focused on the fact that the characters are stuck on a hot air balloon: a group of friends attending a destination wedding in Europe find themselves stranded on a hot air balloon 3,000 feet above the ground.
The cast assembled for the survival thriller included Inanna Sarkis (Boo 2! A Madea Halloween), Gregg Sulkin (Runaways), Timothy Granaderos (13 Reasons Why), Paris Berelc (Hubie Halloween), and genre icon Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects).
Green was particularly excited about returning to the survival thriller genre after directing Frozen (2010), which trapped its characters on a ski lift with hungry wolves waiting below.
“I’m incredibly excited to be returning to the survival thriller genre,” Green said when the project was announced. “Ascent’s story about a recreational activity gone terribly wrong is going to play with people’s real life fears and be a total thrill ride for the audience.”
An Adam Green Survival Thriller We Won’t Get to See
It’s a frustrating outcome, especially for fans who have been waiting to see Green return to the kind of nerve-shredding survival filmmaking he delivered with Frozen. Unfortunately, based on Green’s account, Ascent is unlikely to join Frozen as another memorable entry in his filmography. The movie was filmed, the cast was assembled, and the story put its characters in an extremely precarious situation. But unless something changes, the finished film will remain unseen.
Were you looking forward to Adam Green’s Ascent? Let us know in the comments!
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