Movies
Original ‘Scream’ Ghostface Mask Concepts Were Way Different
One of the most iconic movie masks of all time almost never made it on screen.
The mask that Scream forever immortalized as Ghostface was originally a mass-produced mask that bore the name “Peanut-Eyed Ghost.” Inspired by Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” the mask was released by Fun World in the early ’90s, and the story goes that Craven and his production team stumbled upon it in an abandoned house while they were scouting locations for Scream. Craven loved it and wanted to use it in the film, but alas, Fun World owned the rights and they wanted more money than Dimension was willing to pay. So Craven devised Plan B.
What was Plan B, you ask? Unable to use the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” mask, Craven tasked KNB EFX with designing a mask that was inspired by the Fun World mask he wanted to use. Some of the designs stayed fairly true to the original mask, while others deviated so wildly that they would’ve completely changed everything about the movie. Eventually, of course, Fun World and Dimension reached an agreement, and the “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” mask became Ghostface.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Want to see a handful of those original KNB concepts? Below you’ll find twelve drawings of vastly different masks that were pitched to Craven (many of which are VERY wacky), and underneath you’ll see four of those designs that Scream superfan Mikey Aspinwall had artist Crash Cunningham draw up for him. Aspinwall even had an artist turn one of the concepts into an actual mask, which gives you an idea of what it would’ve looked like had it been used on screen.
Huge thanks to Aspinwall for allowing us to use these images.
Barbarian director Zach Cregger is sending Austin Abrams on a nonstop survival roller coaster in Resident Evil, and a fresh image from Empire introduces just one of many monstrous encounters ahead.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18 from Sony.
Austin Abrams (Weapons) stars as Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in a non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
In the fresh image, Abrams’ character appears trapped with an infected passenger.
“The concept here is that we’re following an idiot,” Cregger tells Empire. “Not that he’s stupid, but he’s not your typical game character, with no combat skills whatsoever and completely inept at survival. Bryan is very much an everyman who happens to be burdened with this kind of sacred mission that’s going to take him into the heart of everything. It’s kind of like Frodo going into Mordor.”
Zach Cherry (“Severance”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”), Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”), and Johnno Wilson (“Twisted Metal”) round out the cast.
Cregger directs from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapters 3 & 4).
“It feels like one gigantic sequence,” he said of the film’s structure. “Things pop off about five minutes in, and it basically stays like that until the end. What I love about the games is that you move from set-piece to set-piece. Every location has a unique challenge. So again, I’m borrowing from the games directly in that rhythm, where you’re just running through a gauntlet.”
What’s noteworthy about this particular image, though, is that Cregger previously warned that there would be very few actual zombies in his film. Instead, expect a revolving door of T-virus mutants: “This movie doesn’t utilize zombies that much. It’s much more focused on the weird creature stuff than the zombies. There’s really only two scenes, maybe three, where there’s proper zombie stuff going on. And two of those three are in the trailer.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.