ROB ZOMBIE Discusses His Upcoming 'Halloween' Remake

July 22, 2007

Ryan Rotten of ShockTillYouDrop.com recently conducted an interview with Rob Zombie about Rob's latest film, an adaptation of the 1978 horror classic "Halloween". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

ShockTillYouDrop.com: How did the test screening out here go?

Rob Zombie: The test screening was through the roof. Still, even if the movie audiences love it, you feel weird after those screenings. I went out to see "Transformers" and after ["Halloween"] was over [the Dimension execs] all came up to me and had these looks on their faces and I was like, "Oh, Jesus. What happened?" and they said the scores were unbelievable.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Was that the same sentiment at the East Coast screening?

Zombie: That went great too. The West Coast version of the film we showed was far more finished than the East Coast version, so it scored much better. That's to be expected. This whole thing has been amazing just for me, because we've been doing ADR and sound now, and a scene will just jump, especially for a horror movie. Once you get the sound effects and music in there it's a whole different ballgame. When you test these things with rough sound and temp music, it's a real nightmare.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: After the first test screening you went back to do some re-shoots...

Zombie: I hate the word "re-shoots"...

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Additional shooting, we should say...

Zombie: Yeah, the movie tested so well in New York that Weinstein said, "I believe in this movie so much, if there's anything you felt you didn't get and you want to get it, I'll give you the money to go do it." Which is the greatest thing because there's always something more you want. The weird thing about movies I don't think people really understand is that it's like a puzzle put together out of sequence. And it's not until you're done that you go "Shit, if only we had done that," but we didn't because certain things come alive that are unexpected. It's not like you have a script that's your blueprint and you make it exactly what's there. Sometimes things change. Characters might become more important than they originally were, certain characters become less important. One of the things is the character Danny Trejo plays resonated so much stronger than I anticipated. There was one more scene with his character that I needed to resolve with him and it always felt like it was missing and that's one of the things we went back to get.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Did the picture become even more violent? There are rumors of more deaths.

Zombie: Not really, it was like we'd do some violent thing, but it'd turn into something else. A lot of it is character pieces to connect things. As soon as someone hears we're shooting more people are like "They went back to shoot seven more bloody deaths!" Who makes this stuff up? It was so crazy, some of the stuff we went to shoot was so minor. Like Clint Howard's character calling from Smith's Grove to give the news of Michael Myers escaping. I restructured the timeline of the film and had originally shot those scenes during the day and I needed to shoot them at night because it didn't make sense within the timeline. Nobody had said you need more violence, you need more gore. The movie's fuckin' violent enough.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Has producer Malek Akkad been pressing you about a sequel?

Zombie: Malek says it, but I'm like there's no f**kin' way. [laughs], I know Scout [Taylor-Compton, a.k.a. Laurie Strode] hasn't signed on for a sequel. There's no way I would do it because I approached this movie singular film unto itself. I don't give a shit about reinvigorating a franchise, that's all well and good because you have to make money but I just wanted to make a great film and that's all Carpenter wanted to do. Not make a series. If they make "Halloween" 2, 3, 4, 9000, I'm not gonna be involved. Because this film has such a great start and a great ending, to go, "Let's start it up again!" Would be, to me, "Oh, Jesus Christ."

Read the entire interview at ShockTillYouDrop.com.

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