Only days after it began shooting in Edmonton, Canada last week Fango has just learnt that the creator of the popular horror TV series ‘Masters of Horror’ Mick Garris has left the new show ‘Fear Itself’.
“I’m not working on FEAR ITSELF anymore,” Garris confirmed live on Fangoria Radio on Friday night. “I left as the strike began, and I’m not going back. What’s happening now is beyond my ken.” Garris and his team tried their hardest to get ‘Fear Itself’ ready before the November writers’ walkout began to make their February start date.
Unfortunately the powers that be felt that ‘Fear Itself’s’ teleplays needed more tweaking, and once the Writers Guild voted to strike, they turned to nonunion Canadian scribes to get the series ready for lensing. At that point, Garris, a Guild member, quit his brainchild. “I worked harder than ever in my life getting most of the scripts in shape before the strike happened,” he says with frustration.
“It’s all for the better,” Garris says. “I’m happy to be moving forward, and I’m ready to do some movies! I’m moving on to [the Stephen King adaptation] ‘Bag of Bones’, which ‘Pelts’ scripter Matt Venne is writing, and several other things I have in the hopper.” Stuart Gordon quietly started shooting ‘Fear Itself’s’ first episode (“Eater,” scripted by ‘The Washingtonians’ Johnathon Schaech and Richard Chizmar) last Wednesday. Next up: ‘Sounds Like’s Brad Anderson will helm Venne’s ‘Spooked’. ‘Masters of Horror’ vet Ernest (‘The V Word’) Dickerson will direct an untitled Max (‘Deer Woman’) Landis lycanthrope show – reportedly first offered to his ‘American Werewolf in London’ creator father John, who passed. Series newbie Mary (‘American Psycho’) Harron will tackle an original called ‘Community’, while another filmmaker will pick up Garris’ own ‘Red Snow’, a vampire Western he adapted from the Del Howison tale.
“Several of the guys are not coming back, but it looks like they got a good group of filmmakers,” Garris says. “I wish them well.”
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