Movies
‘The Craft’ Could Have Starred Alicia Silverstone, Scarlett Johansson, or Even Angelina Jolie!
Also, the studio regretted the film’s “R”-rating…
EW just published a lengthy oral history of the making of Andrew Fleming‘s classic 1996 The Craft that has all sorts of juicy nuggets of info. While we’ll always remember Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True as the quartet of teen witches, there were some huge names in contention.
“We tested Alicia Silverstone, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, but Neve came in and she was really, really good,” casting director Pam Dixon revealed.
Yes, the “Party of Five” star gave Silverstone, Johansson, and Jolie a run for their money, but it’s damned interesting to try and imagine the film with any of those future stars in an early witch-y role.
Hackers D: Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller R: Iain Softley
Fleming also revealed that he had penned a “Craft” pilot for Fox. The story takes an interesting turn:
“I wrote a pilot of ‘The Craft’ for Fox,” said Fleming. “The WB wanted to take it and Fox wouldn’t let it go. And then the next year, ‘Charmed’ came out.”
Tunney added: “‘Charmed’ is a rip-off of ‘The Craft’. It was completely obvious to the point that people would think I was on ‘Charmed’ for years after.”
Another bombshell was writer Peter Filardi‘s reveal that the studio regretted the “R”-rating. “I wasn’t surprised that the film found an audience, but the studio was. They called me in weeks later and said, ‘We underestimated this film. If we had known we might have marketed it differently.’ It should have never been rated R.”
Added Flemming: “[The rating] was a surprise because we actually sent the script to the MPAA for rating in advance, and we had held off on any really hard language or nudity or graphic violence because we wanted a PG-13. They said, ‘This is an R.’ When we asked why, they said, ‘Because it’s about devil worship and teens and we don’t want to encourage that.’ I told them Paganism is not devil worship; it’s actually a line in the movie.”
Producer Douglas Wick has a different take: “[The rating] was all about teen suicide. There was an idea that if you never talked about it, teens wouldn’t think about it. That’s where we got punished for a certain level of reality.”
You can read the entire article over here.
In addition to Leigh Whannell’s upcoming Universal Monsters movie Wolf Man, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel) has also joined the cast of Weapons, THR has announced tonight.
Weapons is the new horror movie from New Line Cinema and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), with Julia Garner joining the previously announced Josh Brolin (Dune 2).
The upcoming Weapons is from writer/director Zach Cregger, who will also produce alongside his Barbarian producing team: Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures. Vertigo’s Miri Yoon also produces.
The Hollywood Reporter teases, “Plot details for Weapons are being kept holstered but it is described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger was a founding member and writer for the New York comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which he started while attending The School of Visual Arts. The award-winning group’s self-titled sketch comedy show ran for five seasons on IFC-TV and Fuse. He was also a series regular on Jimmy Fallon’s NBC series “Guys with Kids” and the TBS hit series “Wrecked,” and was featured in a recurring role on the NBC series “About a Boy.”
Weapons will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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