WRITING WITH A GRUDGE
Martin Grove of the Hollywood Reporter recently got to chatting with Stephen Susco, the man behind the script for the American remake of Ju-On, called simply The Grudge here.
Seems the idea to remake The Grudge for American audiences had been floating around Hollywood before the success of The Ring, but it took that film’s box office numbers to convince the money people it was worth doing, even if those money people were men like Sam Raimi. And speaking of Sam, did you know he initially wanted to Westernize the entire plotline and move it to America? Susco and producer Roy Lee eventually convinced him it could work better as a more direct remake than to change what works best about it.
Susco is in a very rare position, as he has not only been welcomed but actually flown to the set of the film he wrote while it’s in production in Tokyo. Truly an enviable position for most screenwriters. But understandably, since he seems to have a pretty good grasp on how to make the scare;
‘When I’m writing horror, because I’m such a fan I just sort of like to judge what I’m writing against anything that I’ve ever read or seen with the goal that anything I’m coming up with is something I’ve never seen before and that I think would really, really scare me. That’s the kind of stuff I like to try to write.’
Courtesy of Creature Corner
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