The News 7th April 2010

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The UK's Leading fantasy & horror film festival.

The Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London 26th to 30st August 2010

It's so good it's scary - The Guardian

The premiere event of the year for horror fans - Time Out

THE NEWS - Brought to you by FrightFest gore newshound Paul McEvoy, who keeps you up to date on everything you need to know and a few things you probably don't, in the world of fantasy and horror.

horrorchanneloffairlogo London, 31 March 2010: Zone Horror, the UK’s first TV channel dedicated to horror films and series, is to be rebranded as Horror Channel from Monday 5 April.

Zone Horror is part of the CBS Chello Zone UK Channels portfolio, a joint venture established in September between multi-channel broadcaster Chello Zone and leading programme supplier CBS Studios International. Following the rebrand of the portfolio’s other three channels in November, Zone Horror has been given complementary on-air and off-air creative branding and been renamed ‘Horror Channel’. On-air the channel name will appear as ‘Horror’. The rebrand was produced by Chello Zone’s in-house creative services team.

The rebrand coincides with a programming deal with leading independent film distributor Revolver Entertainment for a slate of five horror movies: 2009 New Zealand comedy horror Diagnosis Death, with Flight of the Conchords stars Bret McKenzie and Rhys Darby; 2008 British horror Red Mist, from Shrooms director Paddy Breathnach; The Grave Dancers (2006) starring Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell; 2007 thriller Mega Snake starring Stargate SG-1 actor Michael Shanks; and The Ferryman (2007), with Shallow Grave’s Kerry Fox and British actor John Rhys-Davies, from the Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings movies.

In a brand new regular slot, Director’s Night, created exclusively for Zone Horror, each month a top horror director will talk about their latest work and introduce two of their favourite films from Zone Horror’s movie archives. To kick it off, it’s British director Jake West, who gives us the insight into his "splatstick" horror-comedy Evil Aliens and last year’s Doghouse starring Danny Dyer (pictured below with Jake) and Noel Clarke. A rising star, Jake is best known for his 2005 feature Evil Aliens. Starring Zone Horror’s Emily Booth, Evil Aliens has all the hallmarks of a great horror film: blood, gore, suspense and cross-species pregnancy....!

Jake picked out his favourite films from thousands of hours of content from the Zone Horror library. First up is 2003’s Monster Man, written and directed by Michael Davis. This film about a road trip from hell is followed by Jake’s second choice- Society- in which Days of Our Lives star Billy Warlock plays a misfit family member who suddenly has to face up to the realities of his family cult.

Next month on Director’s Night it’s the turn of Tim Sullivan, director of Zone Horror favourite 2001 Maniacs.

A new addition to Horror Channel’s programming team is Paul McEvoy, co-founder of FrightFest, the UK’s premiere fantasy and horror film festival, which is held annually in London for thousands of the genre’s loyal fans and is now in its eleventh year.

“Following last year’s successful rebranding of our other UK entertainment channels, we were aiming to create a brand refresh for Zone Horror that reflects similar design values, without alienating the dedicated audience base who appreciate the channel’s origins,” says Chris Sharp, Chello Zone’s Chief Programming Officer: “The new look is clean and modern, with on-air creative giving the channel a suitably ominous undertone. The brand refresh will complement the fantastic new movie acquisitions from Revolver Entertainment to give Horror viewers more thrills and chills than ever this year!”

He adds, “We’re delighted to welcome Paul McEvoy to the team and he’s sure to be a huge asset for the channel with his unique expertise and sheer enthusiasm for the horror genre.”

Chello Zone acquired the independently-owned Horror Channel in October 2004, which was subsequently rebranded to Zone Horror in June 2006. Now available in over 11 million households via the Sky, Virgin and Freesat platforms, the channel reaches an average of 2.7 million adults a month. It was 2009’s second most-watched free-to-air movie channel after Film4, enjoying a viewing increase of 17% year-on-year and delivered the strongest profile of men aged 25-54 amongst all movie channels in Sky homes (35% of the total audience).

Recent programming successes include the popular CBS American sci-fi/comedy television series Special Unit 2, originally broadcast in the US in 2001, which became an instant hit this side of the Atlantic when it premiered on Zone Horror in November.

Paul McEvoy