Bryan Bertino was a first time writer when he shelled out a script titled “The Faces” in October of 2004. The plot, said to be set in February of 2004, focused on Kristen McKay and James Hotopp who returned to the Hotopp family summer home after attending a friend’s wedding reception where they became the victim of three masked Strangers known as “Strawberry”, “The Man”, and “Pin-Up Girl”.
On writing the film, Bertino took inspiration from two events:
The first incident that inspired Bertino was the Manson Family Murders of 1969, led by Charles Manson and committed by members of the “Manson Family” — a notable murder of this spree was actress Sharon Tate. Bertino used the true crime book Helter Skelter. On these murders, Bertino stated: “I was thinking about the Tate murders and realizing that these detailed descriptions had painted a story of what it was like in the house with the victims. But none of the victims knew about the Manson family or why it was happening to them. So, I got really fascinated with telling the victims’ tale. And not filling it in with an FBI profile and not filling it in with finding out that somebody’s grandmother beat them and now they want to kill everybody. You read obituaries every day where someone is killed for a random reason. Yes, we may eventually find out why, but sometimes they don’t.”
The second incident, which inspired the “Is Tamara Home” scene, was a real incident experienced by Bertino in his childhood. “As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it. At the door were some people asking for somebody who didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses”.
Many speculate that the Keddie Cabin Murders of 1981, which occurred in Sierra Nevada, California, also inspired Bertino, however this has never been confirmed by Bertino.
After entering his screenplay, still titled “The Faces” into a contest — Bertino sold the directorial rights to Universal Studios, and casting began. A few changes occurred in the script, it was retitled to “The Strangers” and James’ last name changed to “Hoyt”. It was also now set in 2005.
For the role of Kristen, Bertino sought out Liv Tyler to take the role. Tyler had not acted in several years following the birth of her son, Milo. Whilst on a flight from Japan to Los Angeles, Tyler read through “a pile of scripts” that were sent to her. When reading The Strangers, she found the script to be “extremely well-written” and found Bertino’s vision of the film to be greater than the most. She accepted the role. Thandie Newton and Oscar winner Charlize Theron also expressed interest in the role. Casting for James began after Liv was attached to the role of Kristen. Casting occurred in Los Angeles, and eventually Scott Speedman auditioned and was selected for the role.
When it came to casting The Strangers, Bertino wanted relatively unknown actors to play the roles. Australian fashion supermodel, Gemma Ward, was selected for the role of Dollface. According to Bertino, she had the “look” that he was after. Ward had not done a lot of acting prior. For the role of The Man, Kip Weeks was chosen. He initially believed that filming would occur in Florence, Italy, and was excited to be able to spend a few months there with his wife. They were later disappointed to learn it was actually filming in Florence, South Carolina. For the role of Pin-Up Girl, Laura Margolis was chosen. Bertino found Margolis after she stood in for Liv for the auditions of James as Liv lived in New York and casting occurred in Los Angeles. Bertino liked Margolis’ acting ability and asked her to play Pin-Up Girl.
Bertino particularly liked the ability for each actor to play the Stranger whilst wearing a mask for majority of the film.
Bertino was originally not intended to direct the film, in fact he had no attachment to the film once he sold the rights. However, after prominent directors Justin Lin and Mark Romanek declined, Universal passed the project onto their subsidiary Rogue Pictures who tapped Bertino to direct his script. Filming occurred in Florence, South Carolina from October 2006 to early 2007. A real house was used for all exterior shots, whereas the interior of the house was constructed on a sound stage in South Carolina. Liv Tyler found the shoot very demanding on her body, and eventually contracted tonsillitis as a result of the excessive screaming she had to perform to the film.
Kevin Greutert, who previously edited the Saw movies before eventually directing the later few, signed on to edit the film. Due to the film being “underestimated”, Bryan Bertino had a lot of creative freedom when directing and editing the film. The first cut of the film was over 100 minutes long. After the first screening with a test audience, there were parts of the film that didn’t resonate well and so edits had to be made.
Part of this edit was a result of audiences not testing well to James grabbing his father’s gun too long after being tormented by the Strangers. Audiences believed this wasn’t realistic and that if this was really happening they would’ve grabbed a gun first. As a result, they had to cut the film so that they grab the gun earlier, but this came at the cost of at least 20-25 minutes of footage in between, lowering the runtime. Multiple scenes were cut, “good and bad scenes”.
When Bryan Bertino was letting the cast know of scenes that were being cut, he told them that the studio would include his directors cut on the DVD, something which unfortunately never happened.
The ending to the film was longer, contained a lot more dialogue and we got to see a lot more of The Strangers. The biggest points of the original ending were a build up to the unmasking and more dialogue between The Strangers and James & Kristen. The Strangers tie James and Kristen to chairs and asked them to pick a record which they put on the record player and told them they were attacking them because they were home, dialogue which was left in the film.
The reasons for The Strangers faces being removed was that the studio was interested in pursing sequels for the film. A representative was sent down to the editing room and told Bryan they had to cut out The Strangers faces so they could keep them mysterious for potential sequels. Bryan did not want to do this as the ending had been filmed with their faces being shown as the intention and there was not a lot they could do to cut around it. The studio considered re-filming the ending to make it work better but there was no time or money in the budget to do it, and so scenes had to be cut and the runtime of the ending made significantly shorter.
In the original ending, when Pin-Up Girl unmasks herself, she is revealed to be crying. This is not necessarily out of remorse, but because she knows what is coming next and she hasn’t quite come to terms with the fact that they’ll be murdering James and Kristen. Both The Man in the Mask and Pin-Up Girl struggled to kill James and Kristen, whereas Dollface had no issue and went right at it, likely being the most psychotic of the group and fitting with Kip Weeks’ theory that Dollface was the leader of the group.
Each Stranger took turns stabbing James and Kristen, and stabbed each of them three times. Pin-Up Girl at some point leaned down to James, kissed him on the head and whispered “I’m sorry”. After stabbing James and Kristen, The Strangers cleaned themselves up in the kitchen sink and then changed into James and Kristen’s clothes, which they are seen wearing at the end of the film.
They untie James and Kristen and the pair fall to the floor, lie down face to face and James dies whilst Kristen passes out. The Strangers head outside and Kristen crawls over to Mike’s phone which is ringing next to his dead body. She grabs the phone, and then The Man appears behind her as he left his mask behind. He takes the phone, compliments Kristen on a song she was singing which makes him “happy” and then leaves the house. We still got part of this scene, minus the dialogue.
Bryan Bertino intended for all of this to be released in his directors cut but this never came into fruition.
Rogue Pictures intended for the film to have a premiere. However, due to another Rogue film performing poorly at the box office following its own premiere, they cancelled the premiere and the film was shelved for a couple of years. At one point, they considered not releasing the film at all — however they eventually decided to release it in 2008 and it performed better than they ever expected — racking up US$20 million in the opening weekend. A sequel was greenlit not too long after, Bertino wrote a script, titled “The Strangers: Part 2” in 2007 in anticipation for a potential sequel.
There was a plan to produce the sequel quickly to capitalise on the success of the original, but companies kept changing hands starting with Universal selling off Rogue which was the company that produced the original movie. As companies and the IP for the franchise constantly changing hands, a deal could never seem to be made resulting in the script for the sequel being shelved. Kevin Greutert tried pitching the idea of a sequel multiple times but was never successful, he also stated that he would’ve liked to have edited it.
There was a specific scene written in the original spec that Bryan Bertino wrote just for Laura Margolis as she has a self-confessed “girly” voice. This scene involved Pin-Up Girl tricking Kinsey into coming inside a trailer by posing as a little girl who was in trouble. This scene can be found in the original script posted on this site, however it was not included in Prey at Night.
It was intended for Laura Margolis, Gemma Ward and Kip Weeks to all reprise their roles as Laura Margolis was called multiple times letting her know that the sequel was going ahead, however the plan always went nowhere after she was called. As years kept passing, the likelihood of a sequel became slimmer and slimmer, despite an announcement being made every few years.
During this time period, Liv Tyler was asked to reprise her role in a scene that would see her killed off, and at the same time was asked by Sonny Mallhi, producer of the original film, if she’d be interested in directing the film. A role she turned down as she didn’t feel she was ready to direct a film yet.
Finally, in 2017 it was announced that a sequel was in production with The Fyzz Facility and Bloom Media at the helm. Johannes Roberts was announced as the director with a script written by Ben Ketai. Bryan Bertino is given a writing credit for the film however this is based on the fact that his original treatment was used as the basis for Ketai’s script, however Bertino had no involvement with the film.
Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman, Christina Hendricks, and Martin Henderson were cast as the family of four: Kinsey, Luke, Cindy, and Mike. Due to the amount of time that had passed and the fact that the film was supposed to be a direct sequel to the original film: the roles of the Strangers had to be re-cast with younger actors. Again, relatively unknown actors were cast in these roles.
Damian Maffei and Emma Bellomy were cast as The Man in the Mask and Dollface. An unnamed actress was cast in the role of Pin-Up Girl however not too long into production she quit due to feeling claustrophobic in the mask — her stunt double, Lea Enslin, took over the role for the remainder of the film.
Production began in June 2017 in Covington, Kentucky — and was also filmed in surrounding areas like Falmouth, Kentucky and Cincinnati. Production ended in July 2017 with a reshoot of the ending happening not too long after. The film was released on March 9th, 2018 — it was met poorly by critics
The film has at least four unreleased endings. The ending that we see in the movie was not the original ending to be filmed. In the original ending, Dollface and The Man in the Mask get into the truck and drive off, presumably to return for a third film. Damian Maffei confirmed that this was filmed. The second ending, which was not filmed, had The Man in the Mask follow Kinsey to the hospital and kill his way through the nurse’s station to get to her.
The third ending, which was filmed and a still image of it was released online, continues from the theatrical ending a Doctor enters the room to check on Kinsey and then The Man in the Mask shows up behind him and kills him and the movie ends on a freeze frame of his eyes as the screen goes to green. This ending was filmed long after production during production of the film Haunt in which Maffei also stars. On this day he, Bailee, Johannes and Maffei’s stand-in from Haunt, William Willet, reunited to quickly film this ending — it wound up not being included.
The fourth ending, the only alternate ending to be released continues from the theatrical ending — the door opens to an empty hallway and one-by-one the lights go out leaving Kinsey in the darkness listening to The Man drag his axe down the hallway as she screams. To end the film on a more ambiguous tone, the film ended with a knock on the door and Kinsey looking at it worryingly until the screen cuts to black.
It is unlikely the other endings will ever appear online due to the closure of the production company behind it.
Following the closure of Aviron Pictures, the rights to the franchise were left unknown. With the ten year gap it took to create the second film only for it to be received so poorly, as well as the second film killing off all the Strangers, it seemed like it was the end of the Strangers franchise for good. This changed in 2021 not too long after I started my website.
A source, who I agreed to keeping anonymous but was closely connected to Prey at Night, let me know that a new company had acquired the rights to the franchise with the intention to “make more entries in the franchise”. They weren’t 100% sure of the name, but believed it was Sweetpea Entertainment. I never released the news as Sweetpea Entertainment has virtually no presence online so I couldn’t verify this information. However, as of now it adds up as Sweetpea Entertainment is a company started by producer Courtney Solomon when he was 19. Solomon is a producer of the new Strangers trilogy and also signed a long term distribution and co-production deal with Lionsgate, who is distributing the trilogy.
I eventually did decide to release the news a few months later, and still nothing much came of it until August 2022 when producer of the original film, Roy Lee, announced that a new trilogy of Strangers films was entering production in September that same year.
Based on the above information, we can assume that the rights were acquired sometime in 2021, and they began planning out a vision for where the franchise could go next. In the words of Courtney Solomon, he didn’t want to re-create a “classic” especially as it had been around for 15 years. So they decided to create a story to answer “all the questions that had existed for 15 years”.
TV comedy writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland were brought on board to pen the script that would result in a trilogy of films. The final script was 280 pages long and was intended to be filmed as if it was one movie to keep a continuous flow, and it would then be cut into three films in post production.
Once the script was complete, Solomon approached prominent horror directory Renny Harlin to be the director of his new vision. Harlin was at first apprehensive at such a long script — but after taking 12 hours to read it realised that Solomon had a great vision for the franchise, and so he signed on to direct.
Given the Oregon setting of the film, the city of Bratislava in Slovakia was chosen to be a stand-in for Oregon. Production began in Bratislava in September of 2022 and wrapped up in early November that same year. At any moment, a shooting day could’ve started with a scene of Chapter 2, and then by lunch they were shooting Chapter 3, and then during the night they were shooting Chapter 1. It was ambitious, but by treating the trilogy as one whole film for the duration of production made it easier to power through — and filming for the entire trilogy was completed in just 52 days.
Chapter 1 had its world premiere on May 8th, 2024 at Regal L.A. Live. Madelaine and Froy attended the premiere with other cast members attending including: Rachel Shenton, Ema Horvath, George Young, Pablo Sandstrom, Sara Freedland and Rafaella Biscayn. The premiere was met with mainly positive reviews.
At the time of updating this in March of 2025, Chapter 1 has been released to theatres with Chapters 2 and 3 to follow. The teaser for Chapter 2 was released in October 2024 with no word since.
There is no word yet on where the franchise could go from here — but Renny Harlin and Courtney Solomon both have an idea on where they’d like to take it next.
Rest assured, this page is constantly being updated as new information comes to light to ensure it remains an in-depth and accurate guide to the Strangers franchise.
