Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights 2010- review

Jason1_grindstone5x7 copyKnott’s Berry Farm’s annual Halloween Haunt pioneered the concept of basing walk-through haunted attractions on movies, usually tied in with some new release (THE GRUDGE 2, BEOWULF, QUARANTINE), but over the last few years Universal Studios Hollywood has taken the idea to its ultimate degree, building haunts around hit horror franchises for its  Halloween Horror Nights presentation. Thus we saw mazes built around A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in 2007 and 2008. Last year’s horrors were based on SAW, HALLOWEEN, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE. 2010 sees the return of the SAW maze, along with new mazes based on the remakes of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FRIDAY THE 13TH.
Unfortunately, in aping horror film franchises, Halloween Horror Nights has become a little bit like one, churching out sequels and remakes that convey that “been there, done that” feel. Universal continues to succeed at its intended  goal, which is to bring horror movies to life, turning them into amazingly detailed walk-through mazes that immerse fans in the worlds of their favorite movie monsters. Unfortunately, focusing on individual films (such as the recent Freddy and Jason remakes) leads to a certain monotony. In each maze, Jason/Freddy jumps out at you in the first room, then the second room, then the third room, etc – and it’s always the same character with the same appearance. (The previous Elm Street and Friday mazes benefited from being based on franchises with lots of sequels, which offered some variety when it came to depicting the characters: for example, Jason could appear with a bag over his head, as in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART II, instead of the familiar hockey mask.)
Here is a rundown of the horror-movie-inspired thrills and chils at Halloween Horror Nights’ 2010:
FRIDAY THE 13TH: KILL, JASON, KILL. Jason’s back, but this maze is remarkably different from the ones seen in 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately, Jason isn’t really given enough room to show off the difference between his current incarnation and the versions seen during previous Halloweens. The new Jason is supposed to take his cue from the performance by Derek Mears in the remake, who made the character more of an Olympic athelete, rather than the slow and steady menace that he was when played, most famously, by Kane Hodder in the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels VII through X (it was Hodder’s performances that set the style for Universal’s previous “Friday the 13th” mazes). Setting that aside, the new “Friday the 13th” maze does justify bringing the character back, by showing him in new settings and situations, with lots of new gore gags.
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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: NEVER SLEEP AGAIN. Like the “Friday the 13th” maze, this one lives up to the promise of offering something new, this time a grim Freddy based on the 2010 remake. Unfortunately, the attempt fares less well. The remake’s new Freddy makeup is not that impressive when translated into the live medium – it looks like putty smooshed around the face. And by focusing on a single film, the maze looses the variety made possible by pulling the best bits and pieces from several sequels. The result loses the “Nightmare” on Elm Street: it’s fairly generic, with burlap tunnels and tight corridors that force you to walk past windows and doors from which Freddy can make his expectedly unexpected appearances. There area  few nice touches, fortunately: solid walls that disappear, revealing Freddy behind them, or that stretch as if pressed from behind (recreating a memorable image from the original film that was botched in the remake thanks to cartoony CGI).
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SAW: GAME ON. Against our expectations, “Saw: Game Over”turned out to be the highlight of 2009’s Halloween Horror Nights, so we are not complaining when we saw that this year’s incarnation is a virtual duplicate. There are a few nice gruesome bits included, such as the “rack-crucifix,” which neatly – well, not so neatly – twists off its victim’s arms. (We are not gore fans, but this one effect is almost worth the price of admission -although flashing lights and screams may distract you from seeing what’s happening.) The interesting point here is that most of Universal’s mazes try to feature the villain as much as possible, but “Saw: Game On” maintains Jigsaw as an off-screen voice, focusing attention on the mechanical traps and torture devices. Our only disappointment was with a recreation of a scene from the original SAW, in which one victim must dig a key out of the body of another victim in order to unlock a device before it kills her; for some reason, the actress playing the role was camping it up, simply flopping her fingers through bloody guts as if playing a game, not engaged in a life-or-death race against the clock.
VAMPYRE MAZE
VAMPYRE: CASTLE OF THE UNDEAD. This is set in Universal Studios year-round walk-through attraction, thes House of Horrors, which was designed to provide a sort of tour through the history of the horror genre, starting with old-fashioned classic horror movies like DRACULA and moving through the decades to include PSYCHO, CHILD’S PLAY, etc. For the last couple years, Universal Studios Hollywood has taken to re-branding the attraction for Halloween: last year it was “Chucky’s Funhouse”; this year it is “Vampyre: Castle of the Undead.” The layout and sets remain much the same – this is a fixed location – the main difference is that the walk-through is haunted by a bunch of ugly vampires based on a comic-book tie-in. The inspiration here seems to be to go anti-TWILIGHT, which is fine with us, but that will take you only so far. The vampyres need something of their own to make them memorable, beyond the fact that they are not like Edward Cullen; what we get are fairly generic, if effective at hissing and scaring in the dark. There is also a problem with the setting: House of Horrors is designed to feature several different environments: in some the vampyres seem appropriate (like Dracula’s Castle); in some they do not (like Chucky’s toy story or Frankenstein’s laboratory). There is corridor of mirrors that we do not remember from years past – creating some visual distraction that allows the vampires to make effective surprise appearances from concealed doors, and there is a very effective bit at the very end, with a headless corpse that turns out to be alive.
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ROB ZOMBIE’S HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES: IN 3D ZOMBIEVISION
It may be Zombievision, but it’s barely 3D. The flimsy cardboard spectacles create some color separation that makes certain highlighted objects stand out, but for the most part the techniques does not yield particularly memorable results. The walk through the various ghoulish scenes is creepy enough to be worthwhile, but the characters have not truly achieved the cult status that makes them ideal choices for a Halloween maze. Rob Zombie’s fans will probably feel differently – and have a great time – but the average Halloween enthusiast will be less sanguine.
TERROR TRAM BACK LOT TERROR TRAM: CHUCKY’S REVENGE is another awkward attempt to insert the killer doll into a location where he does not fit: last year it was in the House of Horrors; this year it is on the backlot. It’s starting to feel like a pay-or-play situation, with an actor under contract who gets slotted into some movie just because the studio has already paid his salary and wants to get something back for its investment rather than letting him collect his check for doing nothing. The problem here is that, in spite of numerous sequels, the CHILD’S PLAY films were always a second-rate franchise, and although talking dolls are always creepy and unnerving, the tiny tike is just not credible as a serial killer.
To some extent, Halloween Horror Nights acknowledges this by not featuring Chucky very much on the walking part of the tour (I saw one small actor in a mask and costume, a stationary doll or two, and some pint-sized silhouettes). Instead, most of the monsters are storm-troopers with de rigueur chainsaws. There are also some nicely camouflaged “plant” monsters, who blend in with the vegetation on the dark hillside.
Chucky is truly featured only on the video played on monitors aboard the tram, and truth be told, this footage is amusing – a parody of true-life documentaries charting the fading careers of celebrity has-beens. Chucky is seen in a montage of clips and still that portray him descending into drink as the career opportunities fade. In a gambit that borders on bad taste – but is pretty funny – we are told that the official explanation for the devastating 2008 fire on Universal’s back lot was a cover story; the real culprit was a vengeful Chucky, angry at the way the studio had abandoned him.
The facades and scenery are more or less the same as in previous years, but retroffited to accommodate Chucky (i.e., it’s dolls hanging from the tree, not Jason’s victims). Also, the path has been altered in some cases to give you a slightly different view as you pass from the Bates Motel to the Psycho House, where you can see more “Mothers” (i.e., Norman Bates in drag) than you can shake a stick at. The effect is more campy than frightening.
The airplane crash site is just as awesome as ever, but the storm troopers do not do much to enhance it. In past year’s, this area worked best when used to convey a sense of apocalyptic horror, in which the world seemed to be in total chaos, with zombies feeding on helpless victims in the yards of nearby homes. If Universal really wants to do something interesting with this area next year, they should fashion it into something based on LOST – now that would be interesting.

CONCLUSIONS

Halloween Horror Nights would be better if it made greater use of its own classic movie monster movie legacy. It is certainly a shame that, on the 50th anniversary of Alfred Hitchock’s PSYCHO, Universal Studios could not have found some way to feature the famous franchise. Yes, one could argue that Norman Bates is dated, but so is Chucky. Canning the killer doll in favor of Norman – or just about any other Universal monster – would be an easy improvement (and it would tie in nicely with the back story for this year’s Terror Tram).
Bottom Line: If you have not been to Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights, you really owe it to yourself to make the effort. However, if you have attended on previous occasions, there may not be enough new and novel frights to make a return trip an absolute necessity. If you have not already seen King Kong 360 3-D and the Simpsons motion-simulation ride, this is certainly a good opportunity to do so.
By the way, if Universal was going to bring back both Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees for Halloween Horror Nights 2010, would it have really killed them to stage a Freddy vs. Jason fight somewhere on theme park’s lot?
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Behind the Scenes of Halloween Horror Nights with John Murdy

Universal Studios Hollywood launches their 2007 Halloween Horror Nights this evening. The event will kick off at 7:30pm with the Eyegore Awards ceremony. Guests include producer-director Roger Corman, (TALES OF TERROR), actress Patricia Arquette (MEDIUM), actress Sherri Moon (HALLOWEEN, actress Shawnee Smith (SAW), writer-director-producer Don Mancini (BRIDE OF CHUCKY), and rocker-director Rob Zombie (HALLOWEEN).

Universal Studios resumed their annual Halloween presentation last year, after taking six years off. 2006 was short on the number of special attractions, even if those attractions were impressive in scale. 2007 promises to up the ante, including new mazes based on Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface, in addition to the classic Universal Studios monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman) who will be haunting the House of Horrors maze.
Earlier this week, we spoke with Universal creative director John Murdy, the mastermind behind the Halloween Horror Nights presentation. Here is an excerpt of what he had to say.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: Universal has had an erratic history with Halloween, which is odd considering their connection with the horror genre, going back to classic movies in the 1930s. Why have they been off the Halloween band wagon for so long?
JOHN MURDY: We’re the studio that invented horror movies, pretty much. Sure, you can point to the German Expressionist films in the [1920 and 1920s], but really it starts with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in 1925 and the Golden Age of Universal horror films, DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY, and THE WOLFMAN, etc. So that stuff is in our blood; I mean, this is a studio founded on horror. We did stop doing Halloween Horror Nights for a number of years.  I wasn’t actually involved in those earlier events, so I don’t really know why they stopped, except that it’s a major, huge, incredibly expensive production.
But last year…I came back to Hollywood – because I had been based in Florida – with one goal: to bring Halloween back. Because I love Halloween, and I grew up in this movie studio. Last year, was basically a baby step to get us back in the business, like putting your toe in the water to see if it would work. The good news for us was we exceeded our wildest dreams attendance-wise,  so now it’s time to step it up and take it to an entirely new level. That’s what we’re doing with the relationship with New Line Cinema, having these attractions for NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREETS, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: Considering the legacy that Universal has in the realm of classic movie monsters, why did you go outside the studio vault to subcontract other monsters for this year’s Halloween Horror Nights?
JOHN MURDY: I like the term “subcontract other monsters”! Well, like I said, Universal is the studio that horror movies, and we own classic horror – that’s just a given. I think of New Line Cinema, say from – well, depending on whether you’re talking about TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, but really NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, because they call New Line “the House that Freddy Built” – from that point on, they really had a handle on the slasher film era of modern horror icons. We and our sister park in Florida had been talking about this for a long time, that while we have all these great horror movie brands, and we certainly use them and will continue to use them – we use them this year in Halloween Horror Nights – there was something very attractive to us about these three films in particular: FRIDAY THE 13TH, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREETA, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. They fit in well with our horror legacy. They are monsters. They kind of are the modern-day equivalent of [our] characters.
New Line up to this year has never allowed that; they have never licensed their characters to something in the Halloween industry. There’s a reason for that: they’re very protective of their characters. There’s a reason there’s eleven FRIDAY THE 13TH movies – you know, they’ve been around so long, and they’re very successful and have a rabid fan base, a very protective fan base. So we needed to convince New Line that, if anybody was going to do this, we could do this, and we could do it movie-quality, because we’re Universal. That’s exactly what we’ve done.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: You said you were more than satisfied with the attendance for the 2006 Halloween Horror Nights. Were there things about the presentation that did not satisfy you – areas where you saw room for improvement?
JOHN MURDY: Absolutely lessons learned. People coming Halloween, they want to go to mazes; they want to go to haunted attractions. I don’t think we had enough last year, so that’s one of the major deals with this year. Each of these New Line properties have their own attraction. We also have a new attraction called Universal’s House of Horrors, which is about an eleven-minute walk-through that encompasses the entire world of Universal Horror movies from PHANTOM OF THE OPERA up through PSYCHO to CHILD’s PLAY.
And of course we have the Terror Tram. When you talk about lessons learned, I look back on the Terror Tram as a great example of that. The truth is we had never done that before. We had never let 175 people every two minutes get off the tram and walk through our movie studio – through our famed back lot. We were probably a little conservative in terms of the path, of the barricades, because we really didn’t know what people would do, in all honesty. Would they go crazy and try to run all over the back lot. What we saw – and we adjusted last year, from week to week, on the fly – is if you take alcohol out of the equation (we don’t serve alcohol during Halloween, and that was a conscious decision), it’s a much safer and more enjoyable experience for everybody. The guests were actually really cool and really respective of the Bates Motel and the Psycho House, so this year we said, “Okay, what can we do to step it up? This is no walk-by the War of the Worlds plane crash set.  Let’s take them into it. Let’s take them into the set itself. Let’s go in between the plane and the wing. Let’s find a way to do that.”
So absolutely there were lessons learned from doing it last year and getting back into the industry, and you apply them. Also, there’s a million websites out there; there’s a lot of blogs. We read all of that. As designers, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, we read it all, and then we try to give our fans what they want.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: I enjoyed the Halloween Horror Nights presentation last year, but I had not been on the Universal Studios tour for a long time. The scale of something like the back lot tour, with zombies lurking amidst the plane crash, was just something you wouldn’t see anywhere else. I got the impression from other people that what they saw at Halloween was not that different from what they had seen when visiting the park earlier in the year. You know, “the plane crash  from WAR OF THE WORLDS is there all year, and they just added some zombies.” And the House of Horrors was basically Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula.
JOHN MURDY: In the case of Van Helsing, that’s a very legitimate criticism. What’s different this year with that attraction is I changed that to Universal’s House of Horrors back in April. I designed it with an eye toward Halloween. As a baseline, on a normal day, we have anywhere from eight to ten characters in that attraction. There are twenty-five – at a minimum – for Halloween. That attraction was designed, whereas Van Helsing wasn’t, to go from scene to scene of different movies. That was done not only for the enjoyment of our day guests (and it has gotten incredible ratings from our day guests – they love it), but we were also thinking about Halloween while we were designing it, so we could create opportunities to dramatically amp it up for Halloween.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: So it’s not a year-round attraction with the capacity to expand for Halloween.
JOHN MURDY: Absolutely. And then of course, the big event is the New Line characters, and each one has their own attraction. Those you can only see during Halloween.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: So how different will House of Horrors be from what we saw last year at Halloween?
JOHN MURDY: Well, you wouldn’t have walked through it last year; you would have walked through Van Helsing. [Technically, during the 2006 Halloween Horror Nights, a temporary banner was hanging up over the Van Helsing entrance that identified the attraction as “Universal’s House of Horrors.] Dramatically different. With House of Horrors, what I wanted to do was – I’m a huge fan of our horror franchise here at Universal, particularly our classic horror films, and I felt we had never really given them their fair shake. Sure, we have Frankenstein as a character in the park, but these movies – there’s a reason they’ve been around seventy-five, seventy-six years and are still pop culture icons. That’s because they’re classic, and classic is timeless.  I’m amazed all the time at how well known these films are. Sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s an old movie from the ’30s!” I was in the park only two days ago, and this little six-year-old kid came up to me with her dad and said, “Where’s Dracula? I want to meet Dracula!” I looked at her dad and said, “Dracula?” Her dad said, “Yeah, it’s her favorite movie.” I said, “Bela Lugosi, 1931, right?” He said, “Right, she must meet Dracula.” So these things have transcended being mere movies; they are part of the culture.
What was exciting about House of Horrors was: in the past, we’ve taken those things, and [emphasized] just one movie – whatever the flavor of the month is. What I wanted to do was take the entire brand of Universal Horror and do an homage to everything: Dracula, Frankenstein, the fruit cellar from PSYCHO, Chucky’s toy factory from CHILD’S PLAY. So modern and classic are all together, and each room you go into a different movie basically. So it’s not just one thing. And like I said, it was designed so that we could bring in additional characters for Halloween that you haven’t seen in House of Horrors before. That’s really cool; that’s been the fun part of the project.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: That’s interesting. If you got to (I’ll mention the competition) Knott’s Scary Farm, they’ll do a maze devoted to a single movie, like THE GRUDGE or BEOWULF. Because they’re movie-based, they seem more appropriate to Universal, but you’re not doing mazes devoted to a single film; you’re doing the History of Universal Horror. And the Jason, Freddy, and Leatherface mazes are about the characters, not individuals films.
JOHN MURDY: No, particularly with New Line, the beautiful thing about that is that you have so much to draw from. Think of how many FRIDAY THE 13TH movies there have been. You distill that down to the greatest scenes, the greatest kills, and you have so much to draw from. The same thing with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: how many dream sequences and nightmares have there been in those films? So you really get to pick and choose the best of the best, and it all basically comes down to the fans. We spend an awful lot of time looking at the fan websites, asking “What is their favorite scene from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or what is their favorite kill from FRIDAY THE 13TH,” and then we give it to them, straight up!
The environments are a huge part of it. With Jason, the idea of going through the woods at night to Camp Crystal Lake – that’s what we’ve done; we’ve created that. We created the camp; we created the woods. You’re going to go back and forth, outside and inside. It’s incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it.
NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is the same thing. We set that in the asylum where Freddy was born, but we venture out of that into the dream world, so we hit the Roach Motel, that classic scene from the series that fans always talk about. And of course we have the Boiler Room and the baby carriage from [A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE] DREAM CHILD. All those things are there.
For THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, you look at that house from the recent films that New Line has done, the Hewitt House – that big, horribly decayed mansion, and we’re like, “Okay, let’s build it; let’s build the whole house! Let’s take you through the whole damn house and then take you through the meat factory!”

So we really try to hit all those environments that people love on the silver screen, but they’ve only seen it on the silver screen; they’ve never walked through it. The sets alone for these attractions are just breath-taking, because it’s movie-quality. That’s what we strive for – everything down to the tiniest prop and piece of set decor. We have thousands of pictures of these films, and working hand in hand with New Line, who are very, very into their franchises – and so are we. We were fans before we ever had this arrangement; I was going to their films when I was in high school, and beyond. So we paid enormous attention to detail, special effects, full sensory experience, preying on everything psychologically we could prey on – from sense of smell to things touching you – we tried to hit it all.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: Being Universal Studios, you’re obviously bringing that level of film craftsmanship to Halloween Horror Nights, but one way in which it is radically different is that movies can be controlled down to the tiniest detail with retakes.
JOHN MURDY: Yeah, there’s no retakes!
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: Not just no retakes. You have a lot of actors out there, and at some point you have to turn them loose.
JOHN MURDY: Hundreds of them! I personally train every single one. I’m not kidding! There’s a reason for that. The vision obviously comes from the Creative Director, but that is… I always start my speech to the actors the same way: “Up to the point we bring you in, we’ve created the back drop, but you are the show; you have to bring it to life.” I think the best way to do that is let them hear it from the horses mouth and let me show them every step of the way. You know: “Jason leads with his head. That’s the way he moves – his head first and then the body.” There are certain things about these characters that you learn by reading interviews with the actors who played them. Jason never runs. There’s no reason for him to run; he’s going to catch up with whoever he’s after. So we take this wealth of knowledge from the films and the people who have played them previously, and try to translate that to the actors.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: How scripted is it, and how much leeway do the actors have?
JOHN MURDY: You know, we try to listen… It’s all figured out down to the tinest detail, but once you get that down, we do listen to our actors, and sometimes they come up with great ideas. There was one the other night on FRIDAY THE 13TH that I did not write. I came through as the Creative Director and thought, “What’s that? Somebody being creative!” But it was good creative. I was like, “Wow, I didn’t think of that, but that’s bitchin’!” Actors will always have comments, because that’s the nature of being an actor. You’re constantly on the quest to find your – it’s funny to say – you motivation. While your motivation on Halloween might be very simply – to scare people – there are a million ways to do it. Hopefully, we have that variety. Working with these people and spending that much time with them, you get to know every single one of them. When you have that many creative people in one spot, ideas inevitably come up, and it would be really arrogant for us not to listen to them. So we really do try to listen to our actors. There’s a scene I’m going to change tonight because an actor had a really cool idea.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: What’s the supply of actors like for Halloween? There is such a proliferation of these haunts that it seems a lot of these people would get snapped up by the competition.
JOHN MURDY: We’re doing great! Actually, it was a big concern going in: could we find all these actors? But we have a wait list right now – a fairly extensive one, actually – because as word’s gotten out…I think for people who are fans of these films the chance to play Jason or Freddy or Leatherface is a dream come true. So we have a list of people waiting in the wings in case somebody decides they don’t want to do it, so we’re in a good position that way. Plus, we pay better than anyone else!
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: The Halloween Season is becoming bigger and bigger…
JOHN MURDY: Second only to Christmas in retail sales.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: With all the competition out there from places like Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest, the Queen Mary Shipwreck, and the Knott’s Halloween Haunt, what can Universal offer these other places can’t?
JOHN MURDY: Movie quality. It’s pretty simple. We’re the studio that invented horror movies; we do horror better than anybody else. The fact that there’s all these other events out there – I think it’s great. I love Halloween; I’ve loved it since I was a little kid, going trick-or-treating for the very first time. The fact that there is so much competition is good for Halloween in general. I’m glad there’s all that competition out there, because there should be. It’s a unique, mostly American phenomenon, even though it’s roots are in the old world. I think it’s wonderful how it’s grown year after year.


The two thing that we do differently… Nobody goes to the pains of detail that we do to deliver on a movie-quality experience to our guests – it really is like living a horror movie when you walk through these attractions. The other thing is our back lot. Aside from Halloween in general, back lots are pretty rare these days. The Universal back lot that has been there since 1915, where all of these famous horror movies have been filmed, is just something that nobody else has. To be able to take our guests down there at night, and let them get off [the tram], and walk through the most famous horror movie sets in history, that are still standing, that are the originals… you know, when we were lighting the Psycho House last night, there’s a moment when you go, “Oh my god! This is the Psycho House – and it’s the same one from 1960 when the film came out but 1959 when they filmed it.” To be able to bring that to life – nobody can do that. Only Universal can do that, and that’s what makes us different.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: This may be premature, but as deadlines arrive, ideas probably fall by the wayside – things you just don’t have time to get done this year. So I’m wondering: in your mind, are you already looking toward next year, to do the things you couldn’t do this year?
JOHN MURDY: Oh yeah. I walked past something yesterday. It was a character idea, and I thought, “Oh, I gotta do that next year!” Your mind is constantly going, and you think of things – “God, that’s a great idea!” – but at some point you have to say, “I’ll save that for next year; let’s just get this year done!” It’s just such a massive production; it’s ridiculous how much work is involved in bringing something like this to life. But yeah, you’re always thinking into the future; at some point you have to stop yourself and focus on right now. I’m really exciting to show the public what we got for them this year. I don’t think they’ve seen anything like these New Line attractions.
CINEFANTASTIQUE ONLINE: Hopefully, this means Universal will be in the Halloween business for years to come.
JOHN MURDY: I think so!
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