You know if there’s an interview with anyone The Strangers-related I’m gonna be seated with listening ears and a notepad at hand. And Renny spent a good 5 minutes of the interview dishing on the trilogy, where it’s going, how they responded to the fans after Chapter 1, and what the future of the “series” holds.
At the start of the segment we had a chance to hear from Johanna Harlin, Renny’s wife and filmmaking partner, about how they got involved with the trilogy and how they shot all three films at once. This is where Renny dived into the reshoots and how they were motivated by the fans response to Chapter 1.
“The fans, they are so dedicated and so excited so that’s the best part. Everyone is so excited for the next one to come”, Johanna stated when talking about the trilogy.
Renny then took a moment to respond to both the backlash and the love shown to Chapter 1. Explaining that they knew they were taking a gamble when they used Chapter 1 to retell the original film.
“We had a plan, and part of the plan was to, sort of, recreate the original movie in the first chapter”.
They knew doing it would be a gamble. Renny even stated: “we knew from the get go, from the script stage, we said, we can’t win. It’s impossible. No matter what we do, we’re gonna get murdered by the fans”.
They knew when making the film that, whether it was the story, the acting, the shooting, people were going to say “they are copying the original”. But ultimately they took that “calculated gamble” because they wanted to tell fans that “we’re basing this series of movies off the concept of the original but then we’re going to take you completely somewhere else”.
The first Chapter was needed to lay the groundwork, Renny stated. “We accept that you’re going to murder us, but we’re going to reward you”. Renny went on to say that the response to the first movie was great, and although what the critics said, “the movie wasn’t made for the critics”.
“And now with the second movie, we’re going in a completely new direction”, Renny finished with. “It’s going to be scarier, it’s going to be crazier”, Johanna added about Chapter 2.
Renny delved a little into the reshoots and how filming them at once was both a blessing and curse as they didn’t have to wait years to bring everyone back together to make the next one. But now, after studying the response to Chapter 1, they realised things were missing from the story that the fans were after.
“We learned a lot from the first movie. We studied the response and what the fans want and maybe didn’t want”.
With that being said, he admitted they did a bit of additional photography (not that that was a secret to anyone who follows me, but I digress). He took a minute to joke around as a train came past and acting like the microphone couldn’t pick up his voice, but as he continued he shared a bit about the reshoots.
“The curse is… you learn things as you put those movies together and you realise, okay we thought this was the way to go but we have to take a bit of a left turn here”.
“We realised the audience was very curious about The Strangers and where they come from and what their backstory is. And we didn’t realise that”. And without being literal about it, they wanted to give little hints and a bit of background, so they did some additional photography for Chapter 2.
But once they finalised the second movie and started putting the third movie together, they found as they were cutting it that “based on [the story from the reshoots], the third movie [needed] a little bit more” and a little different angle, so they did reshoots for Chapter 3, which we know happened in Canada last month.
On the reshoots, Renny said they “worked out beyond [their] expectations”. And that the journey they’re taking us with both the main characters and The Strangers, he promised “it’s going to blow your socks away”.
But for where the franchise could go after this, well Renny believes there’s going to be more to come once Chapter 3 wraps.
“We don’t even call it a trilogy anymore because we think there’s going to be more”.
We thought this might be the case as Renny has previously stated that the trilogy was just the beginning and Chapter 3 was ending on a cliffhanger of sorts. So now it’s nice to know that Lionsgate envisions more movies for the series, in what direction we don’t yet know.
Watch the full interview from Fangoria here:
