Final Destination director on two recent projects
On the set of David R. Ellis’ new movie Final Destination 4, ShockTillYouDrop.com had a chance to ask Ellis about two of his other recent movies, Dead of Night, a movie based on the Italian comic book by Tiziano Sclavi Dylan Dog, and Asylum, a horror movie which Ellis directed after Snakes on a Plane that’s now being released only on DVD in this country.
Ellis left the first of these projects rather abruptly to be replaced by Kevin Munroe (TMNT), and we were curious to know if there was more behind the decision than his return to the “Final Destination” franchise. “‘Dylan Dog: Dead of Night ‘ is something that I was really passionate about doing,” Ellis said, speaking freely in his normally laid-back surfer style. “It’s a great comic book â I don’t know if you guys are aware of it â and I thought it would be an awesome project. I developed it for 8 months with a script. I cast Brandon Routh, but at the time, it was with a company that had financing that fell apart, and then it went through all these things, and finally, it just wasn’t going to get made. Then I got offered ‘Final Destination’ and then Hyde Park, who I had just done ‘Asylum’ for, picked up ‘Dylan Dog’ and they got a director and now they’re making it with Brandon Routh. Cool project. It could be really good, and I hope it’s great for those guys. I wish I could have done it because I spent a lot of time on it. Tawny, my daughter and my producing partner, worked on the script and cast it for 8 months, but that’s Hollywood, you know? You don’t really have a job until you’re getting paid.”
“Asylum kind of got screwed,” Ellis lamented about his previous film’s DVD release. “It’s a good film and then MGM bought it and they’re doing a huge DVD release. What happened was when we made it, we sold the foreign rights to it and we were looking for a domestic partner right when there were 40 other horror films R-rated, looking for a domestic distributor, and horror films weren’t doing good at the box office. All these films were tanking, and Hyde Park wanted a pretty substantial number for the domestic partner and it was just wrong timing. We have Sarah Roehmer from Disturbia starring in it–she did it right after Disturbia and she’s really good in the movie. We have a great cast and it was a scary little movie, but it didn’t happen the way they wanted it to happen. It was a shame for the actors because I think it’ll do really good on DVD, and would have done good theatrically because it only cost $10 million to make, and they had already paid for it.”
You can read more with Ellis and our set visit from Final Destination 4‘s New Orleans shoot here on ShockTillYouDrop.com sometime in the next day.
Source: Edward Douglas
