Taya Valkyrie says The Iron Sheik Massacre is definitely coming to a screen near you in 2020.
Valkyrie, the current IMPACT Wrestling Knockouts Champion, recently spoke with Metro UK about the status of her short horror film that’s been in development since last year. The film sees an action figure (resembling and voiced by the Iron Sheik himself) become sentient before going on a killing spree.
Taya says her husband, WWE’s John Morrison, who co-created the film with her, was taking meetings with special effects people last week but she says the final product this year will be worth the wait.
“It’s a very effects-heavy short film because of the nature of it being a horror-comedy. There’s a lot of stuff that’s being worked on right now that did take longer than expected – I’m slowly learning about this. I always thought things just happened, and they were out and ready [laughs] – which sounds ridiculous, but I’ve learned that things take time. It is taking its time,” Valkyrie said, “but I think it’s all going to be extremely worth it. We have some of the best special effects people working on it. It will be done this year, 120%.”
Taya called the project a “fun passion project” that the couple created together and says she “can’t wait to see everyone’s reaction to it.”
Morrison (then going by Johnny Impact) spoke with Wrestlezone about the project in May and shared more details about the project, noting that he and Taya wrote the project on their honeymoon. He also revealed the cast also includes Killer Kross, PJ Black and Super Panda, in addition to The Iron Sheik providing the voice for the titular doll.
“In the meantime, on our honeymoon, Taya and I wrote a horror/comedy short called ‘The Iron Sheik Massacre’. It’s about an Iron Sheik doll that gets struck by lightning, and becomes sentient and kills a house full of disrespectful new school wrestlers because they’re shitting on old school wrestling, including [The Iron Sheik]. This is another one of those projects where the idea was contained,” Morrison said, “but it’s par for the course with a lot of things that I do it’s blown up into a bigger and much more time-consuming thing. I’m hoping that it’s going to be done and the end of the year, maybe around Halloween. It’s a really fun, bizarre, crazy thing where it will probably run around 20 minutes when it’s all said and done.”