Black and White ‘Fury Road,’ ‘A Monster Calls’ on the Bill for SpectreFest 2016

Bill Hader will portray legendary cult producer Roger Corman in a live reading of an unproduced Corman biopic directed by Joe Dante in what promises to be one of the centerpieces of SpectreFest 2016.

The theatrical world premiere of the black-and-white version of Mad Max: Fury Road, subtitled Black and Chrome Edition, and a special screening of J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls also are in the lineup of the L.A.-based film festival, which bills itself as a celebration of the uncanny.

“As we enter our fifth year, SpectreFest is evolving into an almost museum-grade exploration of the role of the uncanny in art and cinema,” said Daniel Noah, who along with Elijah Wood and Josh C. Waller, is the founder of SpectreVision, the production company behind the festival that is partnered with movie organization Cinefamily. “The fact that, within a single festival, we can have titles as disparate as Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor speaks to the enduring allure of not only horror, and science fiction, but also mysticism in the arts. SpectreFest is more than just a festival — it’s a statement.”

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SpectreFest 2016 kicks off Friday with the Los Angeles premiere of Under the Shadow, the award-winning Iranian horror film directed by Babak Anvari that also has been chosen as the British submission for the best foreign-language film Oscar. Later that evening, SpectreVision’s own The Greasy Strangler also will screen, with the cast and filmmakers set to appear.

Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi thriller Arrival, which stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, will close the festival on Nov. 9.

The Corman live read, which is for the still-in-development project The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, will take place Oct. 12 at the Vista Theatre. Corman is scheduled to attend and, following the reading, will have his handprints cemented in front of the historic venue.

Among other titles scheduled to screen are post-apocalyptic cannibal thriller The Bad Batch and Universal’s upcoming horror thriller Ouija: Origin of Evil, while a musical evening will see film composer and electronic musician Steve Moore present a live, original synth score set to an abstract re-edit of the Superman films of the 1980s.