Movies
‘Trick ‘r Treat’ Was Almost Directed by Romero, Carpenter, Hooper and Winston!
It’s common knowledge that Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat began as Season’s Greetings, an animated short from Dougherty that first introduced Sam. But did you know that Dougherty hammered out the script for Trick ‘r Treat in the late ’90s… and got some of the biggest names in horror on board to direct?!
Speaking with Mick Garris on the podcast Post Mortem this week, Dougherty relayed the history of Trick ‘r Treat, dropping the insane reveal about the project’s origin.
“One of the first people I ever sent [Season’s Greetings] to was Stan Winston. Surprisingly, he wrote back,” Dougherty explained to Garris. “He said, ‘Saw the short, loved it, if you’re ever in LA, let me know.’ So I booked a flight to Los Angeles. He said, ‘Listen. You need to be making movies. I was an animator at Nickelodeon at the time.”
Winston, Dougherty recalls, nudged him to write a spec script in 1999.
“So I cheated. I took two short stories that I had written in college – they just happened to be set on Halloween night,” he continued. “So I figured, I can always write two additional ones. So I just took these four short stories, set them on Halloween night, smashed them together and said, ‘Here’s my spec script.’ And Stan was the first one to read that. He said, ‘There’s really something here and I’d love to produce this.’”
“But the way he wanted to do it was traditional anthology, where you go out and get a director for each one. So he assembled, at the time, George Romero, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. What a lineup, right? Took it out… nobody wanted to touch it.”
Eventually, years later, Legendary/Warner Bros. picked up the script, and by that point Dougherty had enough experience that he agreed to direct the film himself.
Yes, Trick ‘r Treat was almost the ultimate “masters of horror” anthology film, which would’ve been truly awesome. Then again, it’s hard to imagine the film directed by anyone but Dougherty, as his passion and love for Halloween bleeds through every frame. Proof that sometimes, things work out the way they’re supposed to.
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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