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Hollywood Looks to Make a Killing in Horror Genre
Sun Jun 8,10:34 PM ET Add Movies - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Gina McIntire

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - When screenwriter Kevin Williamson
(news) accidentally ushered in the post-modern era of horror with his
irreverent box office hit "Scream" back in 1996, Hollywood sat up and
took notice.

The film raked in upwards of $103 million, grossing more with each
passing week for three weeks, a feat rivaled that year only by James
Cameron (news)'s Oscar-winner "Titanic."


Looking for more of that kind of success, studios and indies alike
greenlighted dozens of "Scream"-inspired projects, including two
sequels, and in a matter of five years' time, horror was as
creatively and commercially dead as one of its comely starlets,
murdered by the endless repetition of a single interesting idea.


But now, when you don't need to be a financial genius to realize that
the state of the economy is more frightening than anything out of an
Alfred Hitchcock (news) film, savvy executives are looking to
resurrect horror films from their teens-in-peril purgatory with a
crop of diverse pictures that put terror back in the aisles. And they
have the potential to bring in strong net profits relative to their
negative costs and marketing budgets, especially when factoring in
the home video arena.


Remembering "Scream" and another staggeringly successful indie film --
Artisan's 1999 smash "The Blair Witch Project," which earned $140.5
million at the domestic box office -- several high-profile production
ventures are launching with the mission of returning quality low-
budget horror to theaters.


Even established studios such as Lions Gate and New Line are adopting
that same strategy, acquiring or producing an eclectic mix of horror
projects from a pool of mostly up-and-coming directors, not to
mention Miramax's genre arm Dimension, which released "Scream" and
consistently has produced horror films through good times and through
bad.


One might say, these days, Hollywood is hoping to make a killing off
the genre that wouldn't die.


"Horror is a pretty consistent performer at the box office," says
Exhibitor Relations president Paul Dergarabedian. "Even smaller
horror films can usually open or at least do well enough to make back
their budget if they have a low enough negative cost. You don't
necessarily need stars; you just need a great premise or some kind of
hook to get people in the theater."


Glance at the release schedule from now through the end of the year,
and you'll find a half-dozen indie horror titles -- everything from
Japanese import "The Eye," which Palm Pictures opened in limited
release this past weekend, to somewhat larger-budgeted features such
as New Line's "Freddy Vs. Jason" and MGM's "Jeepers Creepers 2" --
some of which are garnering impressive buzz.


In particular, Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic zombie thriller "28
Days Later," which Fox Searchlight releases Friday, and Lions Gates'
upcoming "Cabin Fever," directed by newcomer Eli Roth, have created
the biggest stir, with critics hailing both pictures as fresh,
innovative and original.


But the success of horror films has never really been predicated on
critical kudos -- had that been the case, long-running genre
franchises such as "Friday the 13th" might have been slain early on.
Instead, a genre film can live and die by the opinions of a
relatively small but devoted audience of horror fans, who many say
have been craving new theatrical fare for some time.


"I think there's clearly been a demand in the marketplace both at the
distributor level and at the consumer level (for new horror titles),"
observes Joe Drake, president of Senator International, who last year
formed genre banner Ghost House Pictures with "Spider-Man" director
Sam Raimi (news) and his longtime producing partner Rob Tapert. "You
see movies you might normally think would do no business actually go
out theatrically and do some real business and surprise people.
Whether that's 'House of 1,000 Corpses' or some of these other
movies, it's surprising relative to cost what those movies can do."


Indeed, the box office success of "Corpses," Rob Zombie's long-
delayed directorial debut released wide by Lions Gate this past
April, seems to shore up the arguments that audiences are ready for a
return to darker genre material and that that type of subject matter
can be profitable for indies.


Lions Gate acquired and released the roughly $8 million film -- which
originally had been produced for Universal but was dropped when the
major deemed its content and tone too disturbing for most audiences.
Studio president Tom Ortenberg describes its $12.3 million gross as
of press time "a real home run for us," which explains why last
month, Ortenberg greenlighted a sequel, which is slated to go into
production this fall.


(The New Regency acquired/20th Century Fox distributed "Wrong Turn,"
which appealed to the same target audience as "Corpses," opened to
just more than $5 million the first weekend of this month.)


But the studio has several other low-budget horror titles in the
offing, including "Cabin Fever,' set for a September wide release as
well as "May," a quirky but creepy take on the Frankenstein legend,
which opened in limited release Friday; and "Godsend," a thriller
about parents hoping to resurrect their murdered son starring Robert
De Niro (news) and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (news), which will hit
theaters before year's end.


"There's no question that horror is part of the overall business
model," Ortenberg says. "We just feel like we have a good rhythm with
the horror genre right now, and we're going to be looking to continue
to make and acquire films in that genre. It's not like we'll do it
just for the sake of doing it, but if we find the right films we
think we have the right marketing and distribution channels to
capitalize on them."





Judging from the present state of the indie marketplace, there should
be plenty of interesting horror product to acquire in the next one-to-
three years. Drake's Ghost House Pictures, which launched with the
mission of "building the next great theatrical horror brand,"
currently has three projects in various stages of production, all of
which are intended to become theatrical releases.

The company's first film "Boogeyman" is set to begin shooting in New
Zealand in a matter of weeks, followed by a remake of the Japanese
horror hit "The Grudge" (Ju-On), which starts filming this fall.
Further down the line, Ghost House plans to release a big-screen
adaptation of the award-winning horror comic title "30 Days of
Night."

While Ghost House has the benefit of having Raimi's name attached to
the venture -- before his mainstream success, the director amassed a
sizable cult following with his "Evil Dead" films -- another new
venture, New York-based GreeneStreet Films' genre division Raw Nerve,
arguably has the next best thing, a Raimi devotee in its arsenal.

Roth, who spent the last six years pitching "Cabin Fever" to studios
before striking out on his own to raise the film's $1.5 million
budget, admits that when he set out to his feature debut "the goal
was to make 'Evil Dead."' So, when he was invited to join the
collective of writers and directors heading up Raw Nerve, which was
designed specifically as an outlet for up-and-coming or established
directors to make low-budget horror films, his answer was an
emphatic "yes."

"I really feel that the low budget horror movie is a lost art form,"
Roth offers. "'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' 'Bad
Taste,' 'Halloween,' I miss these unapologetic low-budget well made
smart movies. That's one of the reasons I got involved with Raw
Nerve. I think it's important that those types of films are still
getting made. They're a great grounds for experimentation and for
getting ideas out there."

Raw Nerve's other creative principals include Boaz Yakin ("Remember
the Titans," MGM's summer release "Uptown Girls"; Scott Spiegel, co-
writer of "Evil Dead II" and director of "From Dusk Till Dawn 2:
Blood Money"; and horror scribe David J. Schow, whose screenplays
include "The Crow" and "Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III."

But even mainstream directors like Michael Bay (news) are looking to
the genre for new revenue streams. Bay made headlines following last
year's American Film Market when his new genre "label" Platinum
Dunes, which works in tandem with Ted Field's Radar Pictures, sold
the domestic and Italian rights for its remake of seminal horror
film "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) to New Line for a reported
$5 million-$7 million based largely on a short teaser.

Bay and the other toppers at Platinum hoped to trade on the
considerable brand value of the title and tempt a generation of
moviegoers who might have never seen the original film, according
to "Chainsaw" producer and Platinum Dunes partner Andrew Form.

"We figured we had amazing recognition on the title of this film, and
what we are attempting to do is to bring the horror genre back to
where it was (when the original was released)," Form says. "We feel
that the 'Scream' movies added a lot of campiness to horror films. We
wanted to bring back horror without the jokes, and we felt that if we
took this title, kept the movie in the period and erased all humor
and comedy, (we could make) a terrifying film."

With "Chainsaw" set for a January 2004 release, Bay's Platinum Dunes
is developing three new, independently financed projects, all of
which are set for theatrical release with budgets under $15 million --
a thriller about a psychology experiment that goes
awry, "Superstition," which New Line will distribute; a movie Boyle
describes as a "supernatural 'Deliverance"' called 'The Well"; and a
serial killer thriller penned by David Callaham called "Horsemen."

"In the international marketplace right now, when you have
international distributors who have limited budgets and can't spend
their money on every film, they're going to take the best bet they
can and that's this genre," says David Boyle, Radar Pictures
executive vp business and legal affairs.

Yet, with so many horror movies headed for the marketplace in the
next few years, industry insiders including Ortenberg point out that
not everyone will be able to thrive.

"I think some people saw low budget horror as a quick and easy way to
make money,' Ortenberg says. "When it becomes clear over the next
year or two that it's not quite the no-brainer that people thought it
was, they'll be a shake-out."

"Do I believe that all these companies that are announcing horror
brands are going to be around in five years? No," adds Drake. "I
don't think that there's room for a boatload of companies to be
specializing in horror, but the marketplace will dictate that.
Somebody else will be successful at comedy, and then everybody will
go make comedies."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter