Earlier this morning, we shared an interview with Johannes Roberts in which he took us through the John Carpenter-related inspirations behind his The Strangers: Prey at Night, in theaters March 9th.
While The Fog was one of the biggest influences, he also credits Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King‘s Christine. In Prey at Night, the family pursued by The Strangers tries to escape by car. It turns out Strangers can siege any enclosed space, even a mobile one, and that’s where Christine came in.
“It’s possibly my favorite movie,” Roberts told Bloody Disgusting exclusively. “It’s certainly one of my favorites. Visually I think it’s incredible. It was just something I really wanted to play around with but it was something when I met the truck for the first time in real life, I was like yeah, there’s something about the Ford 100. It was just a great looking car and I just thought, ‘Fuck, this is going to be an amazing character in the movie.’ There’s something creepy about empty cars with the radios playing, cars in silhouette. It just became this character in its own right. It just became really fun to play around with that.”
In a different interview with LRM, Roberts reveals that he’d also be open to remaking Christine:
“I go into Sony every week, under the pretense of doing something else. Like, ‘Oh yeah, you got this news…so about Christine…’ Yeah, I don’t know what’s happening with that. I’ll get it one day.”
As the site notes, the first half of that quote was said in jest, but it does sound like he’s slowly feeling out interest for Christine.
Robert also told Bloody Disgusting exclusively that he’d be into revisiting Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man:
“I’m always trying to persuade someone to let me remake that one,” he revealed in this morning’s interview. “I love the book a lot. I have a soft spot for the movie. It’s a sort of forgotten Carpenter. It’s a funny one. I think it’s a pretty cool movie and maybe it doesn’t quite land. It’s neither one thing nor another but there are some incredible visual effects. Yeah, I think Chevy was in a strange place at that point career-wise. It’s a shame because it’s a cool movie that has been a little bit forgotten.”
In Carpenter’s 1992 film, after a freak accident, a yuppie (played by Chevy Chase) turns invisible and runs from a treacherous CIA official, while trying to cope with his new life.
