One of this year’s most acclaimed genre movies, director J.T. Mollner’s Strange Darling is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 95% score from critics and an 85% score from audiences, the film making over $3 million in relatively limited release across the past month. Even Stephen King called the thriller from Magenta Light Studios “a clever masterpiece.”
But there was a time when Strange Darling almost didn’t even get finished. After just two days of filming, production company Miramax shut down the production of the genre film!
Thankfully, Spooky Pictures producer Roy Lee (IT, Barbarian) stepped in to fight for the film and get it back on track, and both Lee and writer/director J.T. Moller detail those early production woes in a new chat with the podcast The Business with Kim Masters.
“It was very traumatic for me,” Mollner explains. “It took almost six years to get [Strange Darling] off the ground. When we started shooting the movie, we were sending dailies back to the financier, and they just did not like what they were seeing. And I was floored because I really liked what we were shooting. But there were a couple executives who just had different tastes than I do, I think is what it came down to. They said, ‘We hate everything you’re sending us, we’re not enjoying this at all, and we’re not sure if this is going to work.’”
“We were shut down for almost a week,” the filmmaker adds.
Roy Lee chimes in, “You’ve seen the movie, and you’ve seen how great Willa Fitzgerald’s performance is. They wanted to recast. And I said, ‘you cannot recast this movie.'”
Ultimately, Lee convinced Miramax to rethink their decision and after a particularly positive test screening, Miramax CEO Bill Block ended up giving Mollner final cut on the movie.
“The movie that you’re seeing is the movie I wanted to make,” Mollner adds, indicating that Miramax stuck to that promise – despite the fact that, at one point, they recut the movie to present the events in a linear fashion. “I’m very happy with how the movie turned out.”
Mollner isn’t the only one who’s happy with how the movie turned out, as most critics agree that Strange Darling is one of this year’s best. As I noted in my own review, you can virtually feel Willa Fitzgerald taking her career to the next level with her incredible performance in the film. Proof positive that sometimes, studio heads have no idea what they’re talking about!
You can listen to The Business’ full chat with J.T. Mollner and Roy Lee below.
Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner star in Strange Darling. In the film, “Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.”
Stay tuned for an at-home release date for Strange Darling.
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