Paul Rea: Let's go back to a year ago when we were talking
and there was no way it was ever going to happen. How did it happen?
Jeff Davis: Teen Wolf The Movie is all due to Chris McCarthy's tenacity to his drive to get Teen Wolf back.
It certainly wasn't me.
Because the cast, certain members of the cast, had been telling me for a while,
let's go pitch something to MTV. Let's get a movie made, let's get a new series going.
And I I've been working on other stuff,
But there was a point where I was doing a deal with Viacom/CBS, which is now Paramount
where they said, "I think we're going to get a Teen Wolf movie going.'
And I said, "Okay."
And they said to me, "You want to write it right?"
And I actually said, "I don't know."
And then I thought about it. I thought about someone else writing the first Teen Wolf movie
and said to myself, no, I've got to write it.
A lot of it was saying, ‘Okay. If it’s going to be in a movie, if we’re going to
be a feature-film-length story, then everything needs to be doubled up. Everything needs
to be taken to a higher degree.'
I always take inspiration from the director James Cameron who took the movie Alien and
made it Aliens and gave you the queen.
The first ideas we had when we sat down to break this was ‘what can we do times 10?’
So with Lacrosse, I always knew I wanted to do a Lacrosse game in a stadium full of thousands
of people.
And those thousands of people will be CGI but hopefully with the larger budget for a
movie, we'll get them all in there.
It was a lot of let’s make it bigger. Let’s make it as big as possible but still give
it the characters and feel of Teen Wolf.
The difference between streaming and just doing a regular TV show is pretty vast.
For one, we were always hampered by the time limit. We had to break things into six acts and they
had to be 41 minutes and 30 seconds on the dot. So, we were cutting frames to try to
get down to time.
With this, I’m telling the studio, 'This is probably going to be a two hour and 15
minute movie, maybe two and a half hours? So, it’s going to be epic.' And they’re
like 'Great!'
The other thing is you get to up the violence, you’ll hear characters swearing which is
fun to do. You get a little bit more freedom and latitude with what you can do.
With Teen Wolf, one of my favorite things to write is always the humor. I get to have
a sense of humor with Teen Wolf. When I did the pilot for Criminal Minds, it was just
as dark as night. And there was a couple of funny lines in it to give moments of humor,
but with Teen Wolf, I really get to play some comedy.
And I love doing that. I love writing coach lines. I loved writing Jackson's lines in
this. I loved writing Peter's lines. I would probably have to say some of my favorite things
to write in this were the opening was really fun.
The hardest thing to write was definitely the ending
because I've got basically 15 main characters.
And you have to give each one of them a moment and I've sat there for a month. Every time
I'm at the computer I went 'I'm writing a f____g avengers movie. This is an Avengers movie.'
And trying to figure out how to weave all these plots together and trying to figure
out how to give satisfying character moments to every single character.
It's interesting because I usually write the final scene long before I'm done writing the
script. So the final line of the script that I wrote was last Tuesday and that was well
into our third week of production.
So it's been a little crazy. You'd be surprised how many movies actually are shot like this
without complete scripts or with pages coming in on the day.
But I always knew what the ending was. So if you have that sort of guidepost, I think
you're okay.
Yeah, and that actually was one of the the draws to doing this story, which was I knew
that I didn't want to pick up immediately after season six.
I wanted to see Scott McCall come back as an adult and see what he was missing in his life now.
Some of that is reflected in my own life, Scott is thirty I think, in the movie.
And so some time has passed and he's approaching middle age and he's got questions of himself to answer.
And that first big question is 'When everything is fine - when there are no more dangers to
face - who am I?' So he's got that.
Paul Rea: I know I promised no canon questions.
Jeff Davis: Mm-hmm.
Paul Rea: And I don't want you to give me details, but you broke canon or - as I like
to put it when I put the spin on it - you have expanded on the existing canon of Teen
Wolf to bring us new and more exciting things.
Jeff Davis: Yes.
Paul Rea: How much did you think about it or worry about it or did it even cross your
mind, you know, I'm gonna blow it up and it's my universe. I'll do what I want.
Jeff Davis: Yeah. You know, I always come first from the thought of what makes for a
great story. And if it makes for a great story and bends the rules a little bit, I'm okay
with it. Uh, I'm not a big canon traditionalist.
I think you should toss canon out if you want to.
And I think the creator especially should get to decide.
Now when it's something like turning the force into Midichlorians, that's not great, but,
uh, they readjusted. Uh, so if I do something like that in Teen Wolf, hopefully we'll readjust
down the line, but really it's not, I'm not that afraid of it. You know?
Canon is great. Uh, and it provides rules for the world, but sometimes you have to break
the rules. Sometimes you have to be a little, uh, laissez-faire with them, just tell a great story.
Be adventurous.
It's Teen Wolf we like to do crazy shit.
Paul Rea: Tell me about that. I know that's a process for you because, like you said,
your job is to tell a great story. Your job is not to worry about what happened in this
universe in 1985.
Jeff Davis: Yes, yeah. Well, the the difficult thing in storytelling is if you try to hold
to specific dates you get trapped in them.
I know it rankles the fans when things don't necessarily add up.
But I specifically sat down with this movie and said 'Okay what is the timeline? I should
get this one right.'
Should it be a point of contention with the show? I don't think so.
But hopefully I please some people by getting this timeline at least correct.
Paul Rea: Can you describe to people the, the huge stress ball that this has been up
until this point?
Jeff Davis: It wasn't easy.
There's the difference between, uh, when someone says they want to do something and when the
agents and lawyers and managers get involved and numbers start getting thrown around and
suddenly, uh, you're into negotiations and that can take forever.
But when the negotiations are done and everything goes well and everybody's signed up - even
if they don't make exactly what they want to make - you get on set and everybody's happy
to be there again.
I will say that I'm very happy to be here on set with the cast that is incredibly grateful
to be back and loves these characters.
But yeah, it was tough. It was tough to get everyone. So some people needed some convincing,
some people were ready to go. Uh, but uh, we made it.
Paul Rea: And no season seven. You can't do it.
Jeff Davis: Season seven is not a possibility at the moment. But I know that there are rumors.
I can't really comment on them, but there are rumors that there will be if this one
does well, there will be two more movies. So that's a possibility.