Tommy Wirkola is a new name for the horror genre but his audacious, hilarious and blood-splattered Norwegian Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow, shows that this is one director who has done his homework.

If the film isn’t making you laugh, cutting something in half or having intestine pulled out of one of the characters, then its winking at the audience with some reference to some of the best-loved horror masterpieces.

Tommy Wirkola has exclusively talked to us about his top five horror movies of all time, and as a list of definitive titles to watch, it’s hard to argue with. Enjoy…

Tommy:

I have been watching horror movies from when I was at a very young age. I blame that on my oldest brother who is 10 years older than me, who brought home the most horrific horror movies for me to watch, when the stuff I should have been watching was things like Sesame Street and Disney movies.

To ask me to only pick five horror movies, is like asking Hannibal Lecter to pick his favourite part on the human body… anyway, here it goes:

TOP 5 HORROR MOVIES BY TOMMY WIRKOLA

5. Drag me to Hell

I LOVED Sam Raimi’s comeback to the horror genre. It was suspenseful, scary as hell, funny and gross. What more can you ask for?

4. Braindead

It’s incredible that a movie can contain THAT MUCH blood, and still be as funny as it is.

3. The Descent

I love this film. It’s scary and never have I felt that out of breath in a movie theatre. Claustrophobic and suspenseful! And it was refreshing to see a movie with an all-female cast.

2. The Evil Dead 2

What can one say? All the things that I love about moviemaking combined in ONE FILM.

1. The Exorcist

I still remember the first time I saw this film. I was alone at home… it was in the middle of winter, which in north of Norway means total darkness, and it was in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep for days. I still find it scary, shocking and incredibly well acted. A favourite!

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Sadly, it looks like it has. Despite being masterminded by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson – the directors of some of the best loved and wildly overlong films about robot children and big monkeys ever made – it’s been reported that the proposed 3D animated Tintin movie has been passed over by Universal for being too expensive.

We genuinely didn’t see this coming – we knew the global economy was fragile at the moment, but so fragile that the world will be deprived of a movie based on the racially dubious adventures a marginally popular ginger Belgian journalist made using prohibitively costly pioneering technology? We’re in worse trouble than we thought.

If there are two people in the world you don’t say no to, it’s Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. That’s not to say you shouldn’t say no to them – especially when they say things like “I want to make a three-hour film about Jack Black waggling his eyebrows at a gorilla” or “No, really, it’ll be great – just like the other Indiana Jones movies, but with a fridge that can withstand nuclear explosions!” – but you don’t.

Universal, however, has. One of the most highly-anticipated movies of the next few years was to be Tintin. Tintin was going to be a guaranteed success. For starters it’d be based on Herge’s beloved series of comic strips – the world’s third most popular Belgian export after mind-numbing tedium and seafood-initiated Staphylococcus – and secondly because it’d be directed by both Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Whichever way you look at it, Tintin couldn’t be anything other than a massive success. Adapted from a source that both directors obviously cherish, the Tintin movie would have benefited from both of their expertise – Steven Spielberg’s proven experience of crafting stories based around tender, fractured families and Peter Jackson’s love of really long scenes about nothing performed in made-up languages interspersed with scenes of an elf getting beaten up by some trees – but maybe we’ll never get to see that now.

You see, Universal – the studio that was favourite to make Tintin – has pulled out at the last minute over the movie’s budget. Although set at $130 million, Universal worked out that Tintin would need to make $425 million before it could even break even thanks to the large profit percentage that Spielberg and Jackson would claim from it. Get The Big Picture reports:

The money tree would shake out this way: 30% of total revenue from box office, DVD, and TV sales for Spielberg and Jackson, which would be around $100 million, after which Universal could start to make back its coin.

This is just the latest piece of bad luck for Peter Jackson, who had previously ploughed his efforts into making a Halo movie only to similarly see that similarly blow up in his face. And if studios are now being so affected by global economic trends that they’re turning down surefire family-favourite movies like Tintin, what hope does Steven Spielberg have of seeing his movie about temporal signatures and gravity-wave strengths get greenlit?

Let’s not be too downhearted, though – undeterred by Universal’s dismissal, Spielberg and Jackson are already pimping Tintin to Paramount, and if it’s given the go-ahead, filming could start in as little as a month. But probably not before some budget cuts have been made.

In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if – by the time it’s released – Tintin is less of an eye-popping 3D animation about a globe-trotting reporter battling the forces of evil and more of a 13-minute video of a ginger bloke sitting at a desk looking for a stapler and muttering to himself that was filmed on Peter Jackson’s mobile phone.

Read more:

Spielberg and Jackson Can’t Get Money to Make ‘Tintin’ – Get The Big Picture

That's because Guillermo Del Toro – director of Pan's Labyrinth and Blade II – is reportedly in talks to take on both proposed Hobbit movies when they eventually get written and made.

And Guillermo Del Toro has certainly won over the fans, too – not because of his creative vision or anything like that, mind you, but because he looks exactly like Peter Jackson in a Bo Selecta mask.

Nobody wanted the Lord Of The Rings trilogy to end; not least Lord Of The Rings itself, thanks to its brain-numbing, bladder-cramping procession of witless drawn-out endings that lasted – we timed it – for four entire days. But Lord Of The Rings wasn't enough for the fans, and nor were the mega-extended super-lengthened DVD editions of Lord Of The Rings that came with the guarantee that you'd die of old age before the middle of The Two Towers if you tried to watch them.

And that left The Hobbit. It didn't matter that The Hobbit was a kid's book or that it basically involves a bit of a stroll, a dragon-killing and then a bit of a stroll home again, because demand to make The Hobbit was hot. But then Peter Jackson and New Line had a fight and it was all called off. And then Peter Jackson and New Line made up again and The Hobbit was back on, even though Jackson couldn't be arsed to direct it.

So step forward Guillermo Del Toro, creator of the award-winning Pan's Labyrinth. It's been reported that Del Toro is currently the frontrunner to direct the two proposed Hobbit movies thanks to his fantastical visual flair and inventive world-building skills. 

That's all well and good, but can he fly in a helicopter filming a couple of midgets and a wizard walk across a mountain for three or four hours at a time? If not, he'd better bloody learn. Anyway, even though IMDb lists Guillermo Del Toro as  having ten producing jobs and three directing jobs lined up – not including the Harry Potter movie he's fighting Steven Spielberg for, Del Toro thinks he'd be brilliant for The Hobbit. E! Online reports:

"I’ve heard some rumblings, but nothing official," del Toro told Entertainment Weekly last month when asked if he'd been approached for the job. "I don’t want to think about it because it’s such an eventuality. It’s the only Tolkien book I read…I read it and I loved it. So it would be a privilege."

Well that's hardly the basis for anything – it's the only Tolkien book we've read as well, so we're just as qualified to direct The Hobbit as this Guillermo De Toro character. Admittedly we read it as children and we can't really remember most of it – we think there was a bit about a sports car and SuperTed featured heavily in the climax – but we are cheap.

Never let it be said that we aren't cheap.

Read more: 

Del Toro a Hobbit-Forming Director - E! Online

No doubt this is the angle New Line intends to play with the new Hobbit movies that are finally moving forward. 'Surprise! The ring's not really destroyed, its just been resting next to a planet sized colon.' Real juvenile New Line! We'll not reward such nonsense with our money! Or our Mom's money! Sure, it's free from the government, but it's because she's disabled! Grow up New Line Cinema!

In more surprising news, Peter Jackson is definitely going to be attached to the film. He and New Line settled their disagreement allowing things to progress. He's not going to direct though. He's going to play King Kong who now conveniently has to destroy the ring the rest of the way. Seriously, it says so on page 12 in the book 'The Real Tolkien volume III,' which we wrote.

Which we intend to write. Maybe next week. We intend to write a Tolkien book maybe next week.

Peter Jackson, who is still fat but uses CGI to look thin, is going to have his hands in the new Hobbit movies. We've heard the new films will have more of a Transformers feel to them, which of course means that they will be about Frodo desperately trying to save humanity by pushing an electric square into Voltron's chest or something. We've seen the storyboard and it looks gripping.

Jackson and his wife will executive produce the new movies, but won't direct them because they are far too busy finding ways for dragons have a meaningful dialogue about race or something. According to Reuters:

"The makers of the smash hit "Lord of the Rings" films said on Tuesday they settled a legal dispute and agreed to make two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," but most likely without Peter Jackson directing. Oscar winner Jackson, however, has signed on as executive producer along with his wife and producing partner, Fran Walsh, who also was instrumental in making the three "Lord of the Rings" films that earned $3 billion at global box offices."

The first Hobbit movie is said to be titled Gollum: The College Years, and will mostly feature Andy Serkis winning a bet by making an ugly girl popular, winning a sport against incredible odds and/or getting mad and tossing around several drafting tables.

Like we already said, it seems quite gripping.

Read More:

Master of ‘Rings’ to Tackle ‘Hobbit’ – New York Times