Supernatural thriller Jinn gets ready to hit theaters

In the beginning, three were created.

Man made of clay.

Angels made of light.

And a third, made of fire.

Detroit-based Exxodus Pictures and Freestyle Releasing announce North American wide theatrical release date of April 4, 2014 for JINN, a tension filled supernatural thriller. The film, written and directed by Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad was produced by Ahmad, Benjamin Dresser, Alan Noel Vega and stars Dominic Rains (“Flight 93”), Serinda Swan (USA’s “Graceland”), Ray Park (“Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace”), Faran Tahir (“Elysium”) and William Atherton (“Die Hard”). Richard Mandell, Najam Syed and Shahid Syed executive produced the film for Exxodus.

The film takes a concept that is familiar to over a billion people and introduces it to mainstream entertainment. Jinn is the first ever Hollywood motion picture to incorporate the concept of Jinn in a significant way. Jinn are spiritual creatures etched in centuries of Eastern folklore, described in ancient texts around the world. While a singular definition does not exist, jinn are generally thought to inhabit a dimension beyond the visible universe of humans.

“With Jinn, we’ve taken an old story and delivered it to a new audience,” said Director Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad. “I wanted to spark the imaginations of people around the world using a folklore which for the most part has not been explored by Hollywood. Everyone in the industry is looking for the next great idea, the next great franchise, the next great phenomenon, the next great work of imagination. This is a concept with the potential to be a lucrative franchise, ripe enough to lure moviegoers hungry for new content and appeal to an enormous audience whose cultural mythology has yet to be explored onscreen.”

Drawing from a visceral tradition of fear ingrained in billions worldwide, Jinn explores a mythology pre-dating nearly every anxiety introduced onscreen. The heart of the story, however, lies in mental resilience and the unyielding bonds of family. With its unconventionally complex nemeses, Jinn taps into unchartered elements of the supernatural while honing in on universally accessible themes. (Think Indiana Jones meets Poltergeist).

“The concept was always very scary but cool at the same time, and I used to wonder why some of my friends knew about the jinn and others didn’t,” said Ahmad. “We’d never seen a movie, comic book, television show or video game about them. There was no jinn episode in the Scooby-Doo canon. Imagine growing up on ghost stories but having no cinematic portrayal of ghosts: no Ghostbusters, no Beetlejuice, no Poltergeist. Jinn are part of a mythology known to a massive populace – it seemed obvious that someone’s got to make a film about them.”

While the landscape is undeniably new, the odyssey is classic in its themes of self-discovery and the uncertain nature of metaphysical solitude. Shot entirely on location in Michigan, Jinn serves as an antidote to Detroit’s endless syndication of devastation and anesthetized poverty.

Exxodus Pictures is a Detroit-based production company, while Freestyle Releasing is an independent film distribution company that has backed some of the most creatively and commercially successful independent films of the past few years, such as The Illusionist, Me and Orson Welles, and An American Haunting.