Don’t Call It A Reimagining: How The New ‘Creepshow’ Was Born [Set Visit]
1982’sCreepshowis a perfect gem of a horror movie. Legendary filmmaker George Romero directing a screenplay written by Stephen King that acts as a tribute to gnarly horror comics, complete with ghastly color schemes and outrageous gore? It’s a perfect thing, really. How do you even attempt to recreate that lightning in a bottle?
So AMC’s Shudder streaming service can’t help but tempt fate with its new take onCreepshow, a streaming television series in which each episode tells two nasty horror tales from different filmmakers, some newcomers and some horror legends. But if you’re going to tempt fate, you might as well bring in some heavy-hitters to even the odds.
Special effects maestro, director, andThe Walking Deadexecutive producerGreg Nicoteroleapt at the opportunity to spearhead the newCreepshowseries as soon as the opportunity was available. When we visited the Atlanta, Georgia set of the show earlier this year, he explained how the whole thing came together and why this project, above so many others, is truly personal for him.
The first seeds of the newCreepshowwere planted when Nicotero found himself smitten with a collection of horror short stories, leading him to make a delightful discovery about one of the authors:
It’s a very interesting story the wayCreepshowcame about. I was doing some press in Australia forThe Walking Dead, and I’m sitting with Michael Rooker and we’re getting ready to fly back, and I’m like, ‘I want to fing read something on the plane.’ So I get on iBooks and I’m looking around, and there’s a book calledNights of the Living Dead. I’m like, ‘What is that? I’ve never heard of that before.’ It’s a series of short stories, all that take place the same night asNight of the Living Deaddid. I’m like, ‘That’s great!’ So I bought it, and I’m sitting on the plane reading it, and I read this one story written by a guy named Craig Engler, and I loved the story. I’m like, ‘F, man, I want to shoot that, just as a short, just for fun.’ I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I just really like the story. Not that I have enough zombie shit in my world, but I liked it, and I went, ‘F***, it must be good if it’s a zombie story that I want to shoot.’ So we reached out, and it turns out he is an executive at Shudder [which is owned by AMC, who airsThe Walking Dead]. I’m like, ‘F***, we literally work for the same company.’
One thing led to another and Nicotero soon learned that Shudder wanted to make a newCreepshow. And this is where things get personal. As a young man, Nicotero visited the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania set of the original film. And then, director George Romero later hired him to work alongside special effects make-up legend Tom Savini onDay of the Dead. And then Nicotero would further hone his skills onCreepshow 2. So now that he has the weight of the massively successfulThe Walking Deadbacking him up, Nicotero saw this series as a chance to pay tribute to the creators who empowered him as a young man and, quite frankly, to have a good time making horror shorts with his buddies:
They were like, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about rebootingCreepshow.’ And I went, ‘MyCreepshow,Creepshow? Really?’ And they said, ‘Would you be interested in being the creative executive?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah!’ I mean, I was there, I was on the set when they did the originalCreepshow. I visited. So I was like, yeah. I mean, George gave me my first job. So it was like myCreepshow,Creepshow. So my goal was, I wanted to honor the spirit of writers in terms of, I wanted some old school writers and some new writers and people that inspire me. I love short stories, and short horror is the greatest because there’s no rules. You can really do whatever the f*** you want in a short time frame.
As for those buddies…well, not all of them came through. It was quickly decided that the newCreepshowwould be shot down-and-dirty, with low-budgets and accelerated schedules. Each story would be filmed in under four days, with crews working long hours on intense shoots filled with practical monsters and plenty of old school gore. When Nicotero bounced the idea off some genre legends, he found himself further emboldened:
So the stories were really fun for me. I was still filmingWalking Deadwhen we were picking the stories, and I had conferences with all the writers and I set them off into their world. I wrote one draft of another Stephen King story, so I got to write, which was fun. I’ve been doing a lot of writing on the scripts, and it’s a whole different world for me too, which is great because it’s so much fun. ThenWalking Deadended, and I had a week to fly home and catch my breath and we were in preproduction on this. It was like, ‘OK, which ones are we going to do first? You’ve gotta start meeting with directors.’ So again, I called Joe Dante, and I called Sam Raimi – I was like, ‘What do you guys think?’ The challenge is that it’s three and a half days. Then I was like, I’m going to call my friends and say, ‘Hey, come and shoot and you can’t stop filming for twelve hours. You can’t eat. You can’t go to the bathroom. You’ve just got to keep filming and go crazy.’ And everybody was like, ‘That sounds great!’
So Nicotero set out to fill his roster of filmmakers, ultimately recruiting a fascinating line-up of rising stars and established legends. But one thing was consistent – this was not a typical reboot. This is not a reimagining. This is continuation of the 1982 film, with each story attempting to explore the space created by Romero and King, not change it up:
So I got Roxanne Benjamin and David Bruckner and Rob Schrab and John Harrison. John, I met in 1984, he was the first AD onDay of the Deadwhen I worked on that. I had met him briefly onCreepshow, but we weren’t, like, friends. But when John directedTales from the Dark Side: The MovieandDuneand all these other things, we’ve all worked together. WhenCreepshowcame up, I was like, ‘Listen, I want to embrace the spirit of the original movie.’ I always felt thatCreepshowwas way ahead of its time in terms of what George was doing and the visuals. So it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re reimagining it?’ and it’s like, ‘No, it was a f***ing great idea.’ I’ve been designing all the comic book panels and we’ve been doing the dissolves and the panning through the pages. It’s going to feel much more like a continuation than – I’m not rebooting anything, or like, ‘Oh, we’re going to upgrade it and retell it.’ It’s really like, you’re picking up another issue ofCreepshowand these are the stories.
