ZEUS: Highland Ramps Up Creature Feature With David Blue Garcia To Direct
David Blue Garcia (Netflix and Legendary’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tejano) is directing Mucho Mas Media’s upcoming horror-thriller, Zeus. Highland Film Group is handling worldwide rights to the horror-thriller and launching sales at the American Film Market.
Zeus follows a group of friends in their early 20s being terrorized by a Cane Corso during a lakeside holiday celebration. Blue Garcia is directing from a script written by Tate Hanyok (The Pet-Nup) and Shane McKenzie (Prime Video’s Bingo Hell), which promises to “introduce a new killer monster into the canon of terrifying predators including “Jaws,” “Cujo,” and even Michael Myers!,” according to the announcement.
Javier Chapa (The Black Demon, The Long Game, Rosario) is producing for Mucho Mas Media, with Phillip Braun (Rosario, The Long Game) also exec producing, as are Robert Muñoz, Morgan Cano-Long, Simon Wise, Vincent Cordero, Bruce Barshop, and Highland CEO Arianne Fraser, and COO Delphine Perrier.
Production is being fast-tracked with financing by HarbourView Equity Partners, led by Sherrese Clarke Soares (Netflix’s The Long Game) who is also an exec producer.
“The horror genre continues to thrive, ushering in a new era of exciting films,” said Chapa. “We couldn’t imagine a better filmmaker than David Blue Garcia to bring Zeus to life—a character destined to become an iconic figure in the world of horror.”
“With the undeniable talent of genre aficionado David Blue Garcia at the helm, we cannot wait to unleash Zeus and introduce the carnivorous canine to horror fans around the world,” said Fraser.
“It’s great to be teaming up again with Mucho Mas’ Javier Chapa and Phillip Braun following the success of our maiden creature collaboration, The Black Demon,” added Perrier.
David Blue Garcia is an Emmy award-winning Director / DP who was born and raised on the South Texas border. He caught the filmmaking bug at a young age when he discovered the family VHS camera and began directing his little brother in homemade action movies. He attended film school at the University of Texas (’06) and remained in Austin to cut his teeth in the independent film scene where he lensed six feature films and directed everything from national TV spots to hundreds of product and branded content commercials in over a dozen countries on five continents for clients such as Verizon, Dell, Lenovo, Fisher Price, Air Hogs, T-Mobile and Firestone, to name a few.
In 2015, Blue Garcia pursued a project that would both draw on his personal experience and showcase the rich Latinx culture of South Texas. Inspired by Texas filmmaking legend, Robert Rodriguez, he returned to his hometown with a crew of eight to direct his debut feature film, Tejano that had its world premiere in 2018 where it took home the Audience Award from the Dallas International Film Festival and has been well received at numerous film festivals throughout the world and was acquired by HBO in 2020. In 2021, Legendary hand-picked Blue Garcia to direct an installment of the iconic horror franchise, Texas Chainsaw Massacre that would go on to have a successful premiere on Netflix in 2022 amassing more than 29 million hours of viewership in its first week. Additionally, he is attached to direct a horror feature for Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions.
Garcia is repped by Inclusion, WME, and Chris Abramson. Hanyok is repped by Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment and Meyer & Downs. McKenzie is repped by Inclusion, Verve, and Miloknay Weiner.
Lead image credit: Self
