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.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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