It’s taken a long time, but we’ve finally gotten our first look at MGM’s horror film Cabin In The Woods. Originally shot back in early 2009, the film has been stuck in limbo for some time thanks to the studio’s long, torturous financial crisis. The film was subsequently sold off to Lionsgate, who will be releasing it in October.

Normally I wouldn’t be too interested in a standard teens/young adults-trapped-in-a-secluded-cabin-while-something-tries-to-kill-them picture, but the film is the feature directing debut of Drew Goddard. Goddard was the writer behind Cloverfield, which tipped some monster movie genre tropes on their ears. Factoring in that Goddard co-wrote the script for this with Joss Whedon, who gave Goddard his big break as a writer by hiring him for his series Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and Angel, and you’ve got mine and many other geeks’ interests peaked.

The film stars Chris Hemsworth, now a fairly big name thanks to this summer’s Thor, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford and Amy Acker.

The picture (click on it for a larger view) comes courtesy of Bloody Disgusting (as you can tell by their big watermark) and they say that it is not an official studio release but was supplied by a reader. Hopefully, when Lionsgate actually starts up their promotion, the images will be a little more exciting and interesting.

Cabin In The Woods, one of two projects that had been sitting on a shelf at MGM while the studio went through bankruptcy proceedings last year, will finally be getting released. The studio has sold the film to Lionsgate who will be getting the film into theaters later this year.

This is great news for genre fans, who have been waiting for the release of the movie for some time. The film was directed by Cloverfield scripter Drew Goddard, who co-wrote the screenplay with genre favorite Joss Whedon.

Lionsgate may have quite the coupe on their hands with the film’s acquisition. Included in the cast is Chris Hemsworth, whose career my just take off following the release of Thor next weekend which sees him in the title role.

While no official release date has been set for the film, the best guess is that Lionsgate will look towards releasing it in October. Such a time frame would but the film coming out approximately two years after its originally announced October 23, 2009 release date. As that original release date approached, MGM pulled the film to give it a post-production 3D upgrade. It was during that process that the studio fell on to financial hard times and the release of Cabin In The Woods, as well as their remake of Red Dawn, was placed on hold.

Via Deadline.

They say that no news is good news, but some times no news is just that- no news.

That’s the case with the potential to 2008′s monster film Cloverfield. Director Matt Reeves chatted with the folks from Bloody Disgusting and when asked about a followup to Cloverfield had this to say -

Unfortunately, I don’t have any [news]. We’re just…you know, somebody was saying to me that I had said something about, ‘well, we’re gonna try and get the band back together.’ And the band is still not back together, we’re just still talking about getting back together. But we haven’t really had a chance to talk about it. I mean, J.J. is editing Super 8 right now, he’s got a very, very intense schedule right now that he’s working on. And Drew [Goddard] is writing Steven Spielberg’s next movie, I think, after the Abraham Lincoln film. He’s doing Robopocalypse. So everybody’s very, very busy. But I’m sure we’ll get together one of these days and sort of bounce it around until we come up with something that we get excited about. And if we don’t, then we won’t make it.

So it sounds like everyone is still interested in making a second film, it just depends on all of their schedules aligning.