City of Films

Rob Zombie has announced his next project and as I alluded to in the header it’s called The Lords of Salem. The film will be a thriller “set in contemporary Salem, where the inhabitants receive a demonic visit from a 300-year old coven of witches.” Zombie will write the screenplay and plans to shoot the film next year.

Zombie is a talented director and is truly passionate about his work (as heard on his very long director commentaries included in his feature packed DVD’s). The Devil’s Rejects is one of my favourite of all movies and I found his Halloween re-imaginations to be entertaining enough, what I found more interesting with those latter movies was the struggle he went through to make his vision come to life, more on that in a sec.

There was once word that he would be re-making The Blob next, we can rejoice as this seems to be a lost cause and his sights are now set on the original Lords of Salem. While speaking with Deadline, Zombie talked about his his experiences with remaking Halloween as the main reason for why he left The Blob. He said: “I wanted to break away from anything related to pre-existing material. The remake train is getting pretty tired now and when I made Halloween, everybody complained, either that it was too much like the original or too different. I like that people either love or hate what I do because it’s better than being in the middle, which means forgettable. But when you do an original premise, they take it on face value and after three years of not being able to win on Halloween, I just couldn’t go through that again.”

Deadline informs us that Zombie was attracted to the setup by an offer of autonomy — he’s given “total control” over script, casting and final cut; unlike working with the Weinsteins and Dimension. Zombie shares The Shining as an example of a slow-burn film that might not get made by a studio now, which suggests that he might go for a longer, more deliberately paced film while making The Lords of Salem.