June 4, 2005

Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, Burbank, California, June 4th, 2005 at the Burbank Marriot

Fangoria welcomed director Wes Craven with a short clip saluting all of the director’s previous body of work. We were then treated to a trailer / clip of his latest film Red Eye, which is meant to be more of a thriller, now in the age of terrorism as opposed to horror. He speaks very highly of his Red Eye cast Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy and says we should expect to see a lot of them in the future. Wes was very calm and collective and more than happy to answer all the fan’s various questions. Among them, someone asked how he felt about the remake of Last House On The Left that Sean Cunningham had mentioned prior in the day. “I haven’t heard anything about that yet. But Sean did call me recently to meet up for lunch, so I suppose now I know why. (laughs) I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of a remake.”

Speaking of remakes, he goes on to tell us a bit about the upcoming The Hills Have Eyes remake, being helmed by High Tension’s Alexandre Aja. “It’ll be fairly close to the original, yet Alexandre is taking it in an interesting new direction.” Filmmaker Alexandre Aja cites the original Hills Have Eyes as one of the first horror films to truly scare him and make him a fan of the genre, so Wes relishes on the idea of giving him a chance to make his own version of it.

He goes into great detail on the troubled production of Cursed and how it was one of his least pleasurable filmmaking experiences. When asked if he’d return to doing dramas again along the lines of Music Of The Heart, he says that Red Eye is already in that direction and he’s open to do more films like that after a break. He revealed to us that he recently got re-married and became a grandfather! He also said he would return to do a Nightmare On Elm Street film if it were a similar situation as he had had on New Nightmare. He stuck around to sign autographs and insured that the end of Day One of this year’s Fango con was one to remember!

*All photos by Robert V. Galluzzo and property of Icons Of Fright.com