Cell

Beyond many differences from the source material, the brains of the zombie-like infected continue to be rewritten every night, and they develop more psychic abilities, including the telekinesis that lets them fly. This is explained as the infection unlocking the human brain's hidden supernatural potential. The idea is only vaguely voiced in the film, when the survivors from the boys' school explain that the human brain is like a computer and that this could be the next stage in human evolution.

DEEPER MEANING · SOURCED

When Clay Riddell (John Cusack) sits on his son's bed, he is confronted by a painting on the wall of a ship in stormy waters. It is the same famous painting that hung on the wall of Mike Enslin's hotel room in Stephen King's 1408 (2007), a role also played by Cusack.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

Stephen King stated in 2009 that he had written the film's screenplay and had created a new ending based on readers' complaints about the book's ending.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

This is the second Stephen King film for the duo of John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, after 1408 (2007). It is also Cusack's third King film, after Stand by Me (1986).

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

The co-founder of Troma Entertainment and director of films such as The Toxic Avenger (1984) and Tromeo and Juliet (1996) appears as an audience member in a blue Hawaiian shirt in the film's opening airport scene.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

There is a reference to Kashwak being in an unincorporated area called "TR-90." This is a nod to Stephen King's 1998 novel "Bag of Bones."

EASTER EGGS & REFERENCES · SOURCED

Samuel L. Jackson was unaware that his character was gay when he was cast as Tom McCourt. In an interview with Playboy years earlier, Jackson had told the magazine that no matter how large the salary, he would never kiss another man or change clothes for any role, and in this film he kept his word by refusing to make love to another man.

CHARACTERS & CAST · SOURCED

The film's premiere was to be held at Film4 Frightfest on 26 February 2016. However, in late January 2016 Frightfest announced on its website: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have had to pull Cell (2016) from 18:30 on Friday 26 February. We apologise especially if you were looking forward to it. There was absolutely nothing we could do about this, and believe us, we tried."

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

At the school, where Clay (John Cusack), Charles (Stacy Keach) and Jordan (Owen Teague) discuss why the phone zombies are silent at night, as if they were rebooting their brains with updates, they mention cyberpunk authors William Gibson ("Neuromancer," etc.) and Neal Stephenson ("Snow Crash," etc.). The plot of "Snow Crash" revolves around the human brain being infected by a computer virus that scrambles it. There the transmission vector was visual, while in "Cell" it was auditory.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

The film's distribution was doomed from the start. In 2013 Benaroya Pictures and Miscellaneous Entertainment founded an international sales company called International Film Trust and took the not-yet-shot Cell (2016) to Cannes to sell distribution rights. No US distributor signed on to the project. In February 2015, Clarius Entertainment, a new startup distributor, acquired the US distribution rights and planned a wide release for late 2015. The extent of its marketing efforts was uploading a still image along with the acquisition press release; no trailer was cut. Clarius released its first three films in 2014, and all three flopped at the box office: Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2013), And So It Goes (2014) and Before I Go to Sleep (2014). Its other films fared no better: She's Funny That Way (2014) went through a bidding war that Clarius won. If any of the studios that bid on the film had won the rights, the film would have been released in theaters, but after Clarius left the film in limbo, the producers could only sell it to Lionsgate for video-on-demand and a small token theatrical release. My All-American (2015), now under the name Aviron Pictures, suffered a major decline and grossed only two million dollars in theaters; The Outcasts (2017) found itself in a similar dead end to Cell. Given the ongoing lawsuit over unpaid money for She's Funny That Way, it was highly likely that Cell and The Outcasts would go down a similar path. Enter Saban Films, the same company that stepped in to rescue Rob Zombie's 31 (2016) and is now doing the same for Cell.

PRODUCTION STORY · SOURCED

The film's copyright date is 2014, but its first screening was in 2016.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

When the main characters arrive at the school, the "Trololo" song (sung by Eduard Khil) plays from their cell phones.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

This is the seventh film in which John Cusack plays a writer; the others are Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Martian Child (2007), 1408 (2007), 2012 (2009), The Raven (2012) and Adult World (2013).

CHARACTERS & CAST · SOURCED

One of the characters takes a hard blow to the back of the head and, realistically, later shows bleeding in one of his pupils.

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED

Samuel L. Jackson was the villainous genius behind the mind-controlling mobile signal in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014).

INTERESTING FACTS · SOURCED