Frank Darabont & Co. talk about the anticipated film
It’s only been a month since the last Stephen King adaptation 1408, and Dimension Films is at it again with a movie version of King’s classic short story The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont, who adapted King’s The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. The general premise involves a heavy mist hitting a small town trapping a group of townspeople in the supermarket but when they try to go outside, they learn that there are deadly creatures in the mist.
Darabont showed up for his first Comic-Con International with some of his ensemble cast including Thomas Jane who plays poster artist David Drayton, Marcia Gay Harden who takes on the role of Mrs. Carmody and Laurie Holden as Amanda Dumfries (“the good girl”). They were joined by visual effects supervisor Everett Burrell, creature effects’ Gregory Nicotero who worked with KNB FX on the creatures, and movie poster artist Drew Struzan, famous for painting the posters for Pan’s Labyrinth, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Darabont’s last two King adaptations. (Struzan had created a special poster for The Mist just for Comic-Con, which we hope to have for you soon, and his art was used in the scenes where we see David Drayton’s studio.)
They started by showing a clip of three guys arguing in the supermarket about who gets to go outside and explore once the mist rolls in, and they ultimately convince the young stockboy to do so. He goes over to the metal gate and starts lifting it up, and we can see the thick and heavy mist rolling around outside through the part that he opens. A few of the others egg him on and as he turns around to respond, a giant tentacle comes from out of the mist and grabs him by the ankle and starts yanking him towards the mist as the others try to help him and he puts his leg up to keep from being pulled through the opening in the gate. As they make a bit of progress at saving him, they see four or five more tentacles coming out of the mist and the clip ends with the kid screaming as he loses the battle.
Darabont stated that even though he has a great dramatic cast, this was indeed a horror movie with a “hard R rating” and Nicotero talked about the violent deaths and blood that would warrant it, and also mentioned that legendary horror artist Bernie Wrightson helped with the design of the creatures. Darabont and the cast talked about the improvised camerawork that they used for the movie using the camera crew from “The Shield” and when asked, Darabont admitted that we wouldn’t learn any more about the Arrowhead Project then what was in King’s short story. They all talked about what they liked about the movie and Marcia Gay Harden mentioned she liked the “Lord of the Flies element of the film.” She plays a bit of a religious nut as we would see in the next clip.
That second clip was more of a dramatic moment where Thomas Jane’s character was about to head out into the mist to get medicine from a nearby pharmacy and it begins with his young son crying about his going out and then the people inside the supermarket argue about the idea of going out into the mist, who’s going to go and why they should or shouldn’t do so. We get a good taste for Harden’s character in the clip as she rants about how the “Wrath of God” has befallen the town and after a bit of ranting, an old schoolteacher hits her with a bag of peas–that got a big laugh–and she started yelling at some of the guys who wouldn’t go out and help. Jane finally convinces them that they should get to the pharmacy to get medicine for someone who’s sick and to see if there are any people there who need help. After a bit more arguing they head outside with a variety of weapon–sharpened sticks, Jane is carrying an axe–and flashlights, but when they get to the pharmacy they see that the door was left propped open and the mist had creeped inside. “But what if they got in?” one of them asks, and that’s the end of that clip.
The Mist rolls into theaters on November 21.
Source: Edward Douglas
