Latest news with #Terrifier2
Perth Now
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
'It's just constant tension': Damien Leone doesn't find movies fun to make
Damien Leone doesn't think filmmaking is "fun". The 41-year-old filmmaker has enjoyed success with his slasher franchise 'Terrifier' and explained that the process of getting a movie onto the big screen is a lot less glamorous than people think. Speaking on the 'Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum' podcast, Damien said: "Movies aren't fun to make. People think you're having the time of your life. "It is hard work. It is constant pressure. You don't want anybody to feel bad, but it's just constant tension." Damien's movie 'Terrifier 3' caused a stir with its violence when it was released last year and the director explained that he frequently argued with producer Phil Falcone during the making of the flick – which had greater funding after the success of 'Terrifier 2' in 2022. The 'All Hallows' Eve' filmmaker said: "We were on the phone arguing all day long. It was not a fun experience making part three just because of so many other external factors. So much more pressure, so much more money." Damien explained that he is planning to bring the 'Terrifier' series to an end after the fourth movie and revealed that he has plenty of other projects in the pipeline that he could make in the meantime, although he will only board a film if he can have a hand in the writing process. He said: "I have so many original ideas. There's a bunch of potential projects. If one of these other projects is ready to happen and that'll take me away from 'Terrifier 4' I'll do it. "All of these potential movies would involve me at least co-writing, because it's really how you shape some of these things." Damien doesn't have a "strict formula" when it comes to writing scripts but does seek to put in key ideas that he has dreamed up. Asked if he skips to the horror element when it comes to penning scripts, he said: "Not necessarily. I also don't write in a linear way so if I feel like writing the ending, I'll write the ending. I have all the ideas on my phone that I know I have to weave into the story somehow if I'm in love with that set piece. "There's no strict rule or formula in terms of how I write the script. I bounce all over the place." Leone accepts that the 'Terrifier' franchise is likely to be the creation he has best remembered for. He said: "It's certainly lightning in a bottle. I'm not delusional, there's a great, great, great chance that when I die I'll be known as the creator of Art the Clown."
Perth Now
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Damien Leone wrote Terrifier 2 script in his old job delivering flowers
Damien Leone wrote the script for 'Terrifier 2' as he delivered flowers. The 41-year-old filmmaker has recalled how he crafted the script for the second movie in his ultraviolent slasher franchise whilst working in his previous job. Damien told the 'Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum' podcast: "I literally wrote the entire movie of 'Terrifier 2' when I was delivering flowers. Almost all the ideas came to me as I was driving that van." The filmmaker explained that he never wanted to lock himself out of the movie industry before he went on to find success with the 'Terrifier' franchise. Leone said: "I didn't want to dive into a career that would keep me away from filmmaking. I needed a 9 to 5 job that I could break away from any time I would get a freelance gig doing makeup effects on a movie or if I was gonna make my own movie." The 'Terrifier' franchise features the iconic antagonist Art the Clown and Damien revealed that the murderous character was conceived when he was making his first short film. He said: "I wish it was a cooler story. It was when I was gonna make my first short film, I said, 'Why is anybody going to watch this?' "I'm a makeup effects artist, so I'm gonna try and pack this thing out in 10 minutes with creatures and some makeup effects gags and sort of generic characters that I enjoy and creep me out. "Clowns always creep me out. I didn't have a particular fascination with killer clowns, they didn't scare me. "I knew I could put a spin on the clown and make a cool version of one at least and then it comes down to the process of creating it. "It was very quick (to create). I sketched him. That's why his name is Art. I kept referring to him as that. There was never a second name. Things like that just click, you feel like they happen for a reason." Art the Clown is portrayed by David Howard Thornton in the film series and Leone knew immediately that the star was right for the role because he had the perfect physicality. The filmmaker said: "He was the sixth person to audition. I knew instantly. "There's a good chance I would've cast him just on his physicality alone when he walked in the room. As soon as I saw him I said, 'He's just gonna look great.' I was looking for a tall, skinny person with a big smile." The director explained that the actor behind the antagonist couldn't be any more different from the role he plays. The 'Frankenstein vs. The Mummy' helmer said: "He's a walking cartoon character, he couldn't be any more different to Art the Clown, it's incredible." Damien also revealed that he had to curb the enthusiasm of star Lauren LaVera – who plays the role of Sienna Shaw – when it came to doing stunts for the flick. He recalled: "She was so psyched about it and she read the script. She's a stunt performer, so she couldn't wait to get in and do all the physical stuff. She wanted to do stunts that I wouldn't even let her do."
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The director of 'Terrifier' built his horror movie franchise as a side gig while working as a delivery driver. Now the films have made over $100 million.
The "Terrifier" franchise has given audiences a new horror icon with the serial killer Art the Clown. Damien Leone spent 10 years delivering flowers while writing "Terrifier" and "Terrifier 2." Now, after "Terrifier 3," the franchise has made almost $100 million worldwide. The director Damien Leone said he spent 10 years working as a flower delivery driver while writing the "Terrifier" movies. Now, the ultra-gory franchise has made over $100 million worldwide. The supernatural slasher movies revolve around Art (David Howard Thornton), a silent and brutal serial killer. To some horror fans, Art the Clown is now as iconic as the likes of Ghostface, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger. The 2018 movie "Terrifier" made $420,000, and 2022's "Terrifier 2" earned $15 million as the hype around the character grew. Then, in 2024, "Terrifier 3" upped the gore — and the returns. The third installment grossed $90 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo. Collectively, Leone's twisted creation has now made $106 million. Leone told Tuesday's episode of "Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum" that many aspiring filmmakers ask him about his path to success in the industry. "My favorite thing to tell them is, 'Dude, I was writing the script to 'Terrifier 2' in a flower van," he said. "That was my primary job for 10 years, because I knew I didn't want to dive into a career that would lock me up or keep me away from filmmaking," he added. The director said that the role was flexible enough that he could focus on freelancing within the film industry, while writing "Terrifier 2." He added: "I knew I needed a nine-to-five job that I could break away from any time I would get a freelance gig doing makeup effects on a movie or if I was going to go make my own movie, but I would always go back to the flower van. "I literally wrote the entire movie of 'Terrifier 2' when I was delivering flowers. Almost all the ideas came to me while I was driving that van." Leone is working on finishing the series with "Terrifier 4," which will dive further into the mythology surrounding the franchise's heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and Art the Clown. He said: "I'm going to wrap it all up in the next installment." Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
The director of 'Terrifier' built his horror movie franchise as a side gig while working as a delivery driver. Now the films have made over $100 million.
The director Damien Leone said he spent 10 years working as a flower delivery driver while writing the "Terrifier" movies. Now, the ultra-gory franchise has made over $100 million worldwide. The supernatural slasher movies revolve around Art (David Howard Thornton), a silent and brutal serial killer. To some horror fans, Art the Clown is now as iconic as the likes of Ghostface, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger. The 2018 movie "Terrifier" made $420,000, and 2022's " Terrifier 2" earned $15 million as the hype around the character grew. Then, in 2024, " Terrifier 3" upped the gore — and the returns. The third installment grossed $90 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo. Collectively, Leone's twisted creation has now made $106 million. Leone told Tuesday's episode of " Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum" that many aspiring filmmakers ask him about his path to success in the industry. "My favorite thing to tell them is, 'Dude, I was writing the script to 'Terrifier 2' in a flower van," he said. "That was my primary job for 10 years, because I knew I didn't want to dive into a career that would lock me up or keep me away from filmmaking," he added. The director said that the role was flexible enough that he could focus on freelancing within the film industry, while writing "Terrifier 2." He added: "I knew I needed a nine-to-five job that I could break away from any time I would get a freelance gig doing makeup effects on a movie or if I was going to go make my own movie, but I would always go back to the flower van. "I literally wrote the entire movie of 'Terrifier 2' when I was delivering flowers. Almost all the ideas came to me while I was driving that van." Leone is working on finishing the series with "Terrifier 4," which will dive further into the mythology surrounding the franchise's heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and Art the Clown. He said: "I'm going to wrap it all up in the next installment."
Los Angeles Times
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The traditional indie film system is hurting. This executive says he's built a winning formula
Chris McGurk saw the writing on the wall for the independent film business more than a decade ago. His distribution company Cinedigm released 'Short Term 12,' starring Brie Larson, to rave reviews in 2013. Hardly anyone showed up to see it in theaters. 'We probably lost $4 million on it,' McGurk told the Times. 'At that point, I said, we gotta stop doing this. Let's see if we can build a new machine.' So the firm pivoted its focus, spending years assembling and growing its collection of 'new media' assets — streaming channels, a podcast network and its own ad technology. It used those online channels, social media and its horror fan site Bloody Disgusting to wage a microbudget campaign for Damien Leone's gory underground killer-clown horror sequel 'Terrifier 2' in 2022, grossing nearly $11 million at the domestic box office. Last year's follow-up, 'Terrifier 3,' did even better for the Los Angeles-based company, now called Cineverse: $54 million in North American ticket sales and $90 million worldwide. Now the company is trying to fill its release slate with similar intellectual-property-driven movies that can leverage that same system, including a Legendary-produced revival of the Troma cult classic 'The Toxic Avenger,' starring Peter Dinklage (set for Aug. 29). Cineverse's success comes at a time when many people believe the traditional way of releasing movies — with broad-based, expensive national ad campaigns — is broken for some types of movies. Certain films still do good business, including big action spectacles, low-cost horror pictures and animated movies. But indie releases and mid-budget films are increasingly risky. Those themes will surely be much discussed this week at CinemaCon, the movie theater industry's annual trade show in Las Vegas. With that in mind, I spoke to McGurk, who joined the company in 2011 after stints at Overture Films and MGM, about why his model is well suited to the digital age and what Hollywood might be able to learn from it. How does your business model allow you to lean further into theatrical releases at this perilous time? The all-in investment for 'Terrifier 3' was less than $5 million in acquisition costs and marketing spend. If you take the theatrical marketing costs out of the mix, it fundamentally changes the economics, not just for us but for producers and filmmakers. This is something that non-Hollywood people don't understand. Often, for smaller movies, the marketing spend is a much bigger cost than making the film. If you read a recent interview with Tom Quinn, CEO of Neon, that's exactly what he said. They spent $18 million on 'Anora,' and it was a $6 million movie. In our case, the producers were sitting behind a less-than-$5-million investment on our part, and they're pretty happy right now. We've already added three movies to our release schedule. One is 'The Toxic Avenger,' which Legendary produced and we picked up. Our all-in investment in that will be less than $5 million. And $5 million is low for a Legendary Pictures movie. It was originally rated R, but we put some stuff back in it, and now we're going to take it out unrated, just like we did with 'Terrifier,' because we think there's a fan base out there that basically is saying 'screw it' to all the rules and regulations and the MPA [Motion Picture Assn.]. They want to see a raw, uncut movie. The movie was in the can in 2023 and it went to Fantastic Fest and got great reviews, but the studios couldn't figure out how to release it. So part of our campaign is, 'We're giving you the movie that the big studios didn't want released or couldn't release.' And we'll go right after the 'Terrifier' audience, even though this isn't exactly a straight horror movie. It's a Troma movie. That's really the only way to describe it. We also have 'Silent Night, Deadly Night,' which is a remake of the movie in the '80s that they banned from theaters. And then we also announced 'Wolf Creek: Legacy,' the third in that series. The goal is to maybe get up to as many as eight wide releases a year. I know it's kind of counter to what everybody else is doing, but we're going to keep applying our formula until it doesn't work. And that formula is what? It's really saying, we've got this collection of new-media assets that we own and control, so how can we leverage that in order to drive media value and awareness? We think on 'Terrifier 3' we probably created $5 million to $7 million in media value without spending a dime beyond the cost of producing the ads, which isn't that much. You're able to do this because you are small by design, compared to the studio players. And I think we're willing to throw out all the rules and leverage these assets. We're not going through a middleman. If you're the head of marketing at a studio, your new spending plan is to do everything you did before, but do a little less of it. Studios often won't do mid-budget movies because they're so challenging financially. Are there ways to be smarter about marketing those films? I think we're onto something. I hate to make the comparison, but it's analogous to how Trump won. He went with the podcasts and very targeted spending, TikTok and digital spending and things like that. Whereas Kamala Harris followed more of a national media buying approach but lost. The problem is, every executive in that business is trying not to screw up. So it really does stifle innovation and risk-taking. How do you target the marketing for 'The Toxic Avenger?' We're going to use our own ad technology to identify where the fan base is for this type of movie — the Troma fans. And we're going to place ads to target that audience and market it on our podcast network as well. The other thing that we've had real success in doing is creating stunts and promos that have attracted a lot of attention. For 'Terrifier 3,' we had a guy dressed up as Art the Clown walking through Times Square the week before our movie opening, and looking up at a billboard of the Joker. For 'Toxic Avenger,' we did a stunt where they dyed the Chicago River green for St. Patrick's Day and we had Toxie on a boat with his mop going around to clean it up. You've got the Troma geeks, but you've also got Macon Blair directing, who has a following. With 'Terrifier 3,' our whole thing was, how do we expand the audience beyond the people who went to see 'Terrifier 2'? So we spent a lot of time really focusing on the Hispanic audience and the African American audience, and almost half the viewers on opening weekend were Hispanic. Then it was trying to figure out how we could have group attendance and increase our female attendance. And we did that in two ways. One was, we tried to make Art the Clown this must-see character and not focus on the gore. Sort of what we did with 'Hannibal' back at MGM, where we sold Hannibal Lecter as the James Bond of serial killers. And then toward the end, we really did the whole 'You've got to see this movie, because everybody's going to be talking about it.' So we need to do that here. We need to make sure that Troma fans go to see the movie. But we need to expand out of that and focus on the comedy and the actors to try to get more of a female audience and more group attendance. That's key to the decision to go unrated, right? You're going for a 'You really shouldn't be seeing this' kind of appeal. The studios can't really release an unrated movie, because they're signatories to MPA. It gives us a real advantage, because we really don't care. There's a space for filmmakers to do things outside the traditional system. The thing is, we didn't have final cut on the 'Terrifier' films, and we were fine with that. Let him make his movie. That's our approach. When I was at MGM, I was trying to get Christopher Nolan to do [James] Bond, and the Bond producers would not give him final cut. Now he's Christopher Nolan times five. Well, now they'll have another chance with producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman in charge of 007 for Amazon. He'll get final cut now, but it's 20 years too late, in my view. Anything to add? Just one important point. I hated how everybody on Wall Street and in the entertainment press set up this big thing of 'streaming versus theatrical,' with streaming being the villain, because it was helping to destroy this great institution in America. What we tried to do with the 'Terrifier' movies is show that there could be a symbiotic relationship between the two. We use streaming and the podcasts to basically help make a theatrical success in a unique and different way, and hopefully everybody can do more of that. FCC chair opens investigation into Disney and ABC for DEI practices. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has opened an inquiry into Disney and ABC's DEI programs, marking the second investigation of a major media company. Jen Salke is out at Amazon MGM Studios. Salke said she would start her own production company after leaving her perch at the company. She had some major hits like 'Reacher' but was criticized for her spending on shows including 'Citadel' and for mishandling the Bond franchise. How California legislators aim to sweeten film tax credits for Hollywood. The proposed legislation would increase to 35% the amount of qualified production the credit would cover. Los Angeles has been losing productions to other states and countries with generous programs. Republicans grill PBS, NPR chiefs as Democrats mock proceedings. The two public media entities have become frequent targets in the GOP's efforts to reduce government spending. There was grandstanding about drag queens and jokes about Elmo. Inside Paramount's bumpy sale: the president, a scion and a possible sheikh. 'They have to get [the deal] approved,' said Mario Gabelli, a longtime Paramount shareholder. Gabelli and others are eager for a new chapter, but the Skydance deal has turned into a fitful slog. ICYMI: In a surprise, Jason Statham's mid-budget action movie 'A Working Man' was No. 1 at the U.S. box office last weekend with $15.2 million, topping Disney's troubled 'Snow White.' That live-action remake grossed $14.2 million, a 66% drop from a disappointing debut that generated poor word-of-mouth. 'A Working Man' comes at an interesting time for Amazon MGM Studios, which last week announced the departure of leader Jennifer Salke after seven years. Film head Courtenay Valenti, the former Warner Bros. film executive who joined Amazon in 2023, now will report directly to Salke's old boss, Mike Hopkins. Local shoot days were up 5% last week compared with a year ago, according to FilmLA data. Listen: Alison Krauss and Union Station released their first album in 14 years. No surprise, it's excellent.
