Jeffrey Reddick, screenwriter: For me it’s just like trying…I have a movie at Lionsgate
that’s got a 95% African American cast and it’s not about…it’s a horror movie…it’s
a slasher movie.
It’s just like if you’re watching SCREAM where it’s a bunch of pretty White kids
and there’s not even the first one (they didn’t have any Black people in the first
one) but one of the later SCREAMs where you are watching a bunch of pretty White kids
and they have the one Black friend, our movie is like you’re just focusing on all the
pretty Black and Latino kids with a couple white friends.
So it’s not that you’re making a movie that is about race, it’s just you’re casting
a movie that is focusing on a different group of friends that most of the horror films do.
So I think that that type of movie (in my humble opinion) will actually reach a wider
market because white audiences just want to go see a good horror movie, you know?
Like they don’t care what color the characters are.
And the people of color who are horribly under represented in horror films are a huge audience
for horror films.
We’ve just done all the test…even at New Line [Cinema] we just did test marketing back
in the 90’s and it was in all the major cities it was 50% of the audiences in all
of the major cities were African American and Latino.
And it’s such a horribly underserved market that they will go to see the movie numerous
times because they’ve never seen themselves represented on screen as just people.
And regular horror fans (no, not regular…that so awful).
I’m trying to be so PC right now.
Screw that!
I’m no snowflake.
But you know horror fans (white horror fans) as long as it’s a good slasher movie, they
are going to go see it a couple times, too.
So that’s going to be a really good social experiment.
And it’s taken me about 20…I tried to have a Black lead in THE FINAL DESTINATION
movies and it just never happened.
And so it’s taken me 20-some years to finally get a movie going.
So it’s funny when we talk about where race is in America and it’s like “Oh, we voted
for Obama so we’re post-racial now and everything is honkey-dory.”
And it’s like “Ah?”
Because Hollywood is pretty freakin’ liberal.
But they know what sells and what wont sell and how people pigeon-hole that kind of movies
and sometimes they do or what they will go see but sometimes you just have to prove to
them like a movie like GIRL TRIP that came out with Jada Pinkett and Queen Latifah and
makes 30 million dollars opening weekend and it’s like “What?”
And WONDER WOMAN comes out directed by a woman about a woman superhero and you are like “What?”
They act so surprised and its like nobody wants to take a chance on something that is
different.
So you have to find that person who will and then once you do, I guarantee once this movie
comes out there’s going to be a whole bunch of slasher/horror films that are like with
a heavily diverse cast.
So again it’s kind of like a quiet fight.
I haven’t been running around after every film that’s come out “I wanted a Black
character to be the lead and they wouldn’t do it."
That’s not going to do me any good.
That’s just going to upset people and make people think that I’m crying racism, you
know what I’m saying.
It’s not going to be productive.
So you just kind of have to put your best foot forward and put your money where your
mouth is and try to until you find the people who get behind the movie like the one we’re
doing now.
Film Courage: So did you try and add a non-white character to any of THE FINAL DESTINATION
movies?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Film Courage: And what would happen?
Jeffrey: They would just cast a white person.
Film Courage: So you would write it into the script as to who this person was?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Film Courage: And then when you saw the final product that person wasn’t there?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
And the reality is internationally movies if the lead is a person of color they don’t
sell as well internationally.
And again except for Halle Berry or Denzel Washington, there’s like maybe five names
that will in certain genres that will sell internationally.
But a movie like GET OUT comes out and it makes a hundred million here and it only cost
five million to make.
It’s like who cares what it makes internationally.
So there is a little bit of business reasoning behind it but a lot of it is like until you
try to break the mold, you never know what the mold…you never know until you try to
break the mold.
That’s why I think this last year with GET OUT and WONDER WOMAN were so important is
because even on my Facebook before it came I was like “I bet my life WONDER WOMAN is
going to be one of the top selling superhero films of all time” and it’s just people
underestimate how powerful of an impact Lynda Carter had as Wonder Woman, so pretty much
everybody in their forties, fifties and above and late thirties…anybody who kind of grew
up on seeing Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and loved that character and she’s been
around forever and then you’ve got younger people meeting her in the Justice League.
So I knew the movie was going to do huge business but nobody…it’s like if an openly gay
actor were to play James Bond, nobody would believe it.
I’m like “Why don’t we try it first?”
Because I think people who go watch movies know that Robert Englund is not a real-life
bad guy that wears…I’m sure they know that he’s not like that in real life.
It’s funny so you just try to make whatever changes you can with your art and a lot of
times it doesn’t even happen.
And again, I work in the horror genre so it’s even harder to try and like…you can’t
get too high-minded in a horror film.
I can make strong female characters, I can make interesting dynamics between everybody,
show diversities of people of every religion or background and you can try to put all of
that in your movie but a lot of times that ends up getting out of your hands once you
sell the script, so that’s where you just have to kind of let go and be grateful you
had a movie made.