Genre: Horror.
Studio:
Unknown.
Production Company:
Unknown.
Project Phase: Development Hell.
Who's In It:
Noah Hathaway; Corey Haim (rumored to have been fired); Elizabeth Berkley (in negotiations); Joey Gordon Levitt, Ethan Embr, Will Friedle are also
rumored to be thinking of taking roles in the film.
Who's Making It:
Sean-Michael (Director, Screenwriter); Vincent J Guastini (Special Visual Make-Up Effects); Max Ink Cafe (Special Computer
Generated Visual Effects).
Premise: Three teenage boys realizes that their dates on Friday night are actually vampires.
Release Date: Unknown.
Comments: See Scoop Feedback.
Rumors: Unknown.
Scoop Feedback:
September 7, 1998... "The premise is incredibly over-simplistic, but what you can expect is the end all of teen cinema." An ambitious statement from 'IamNC17', a source who first told us about this project in development. "It has everything: comedy, horror, drama, teen angst, socially relevant issues, it's all that and a bag of chips."
Readers of Garth Franklin's superb Dark Horizons film site will remember the name of this project. Franklin's DH broke the world exclusive on Friday Night, a vampire film that's being considered for development by some Hollywood studios, a little less than two months ago. While our scooper is familiar with DH breaking the news, they were not the individual that scooped Dark Horizons.
From what we've been told about this project (and without having read the script or knowing little more about the premise except what we've told you), it's sure got one heck of an interesting development history. We confirmed that the project is indeed legit, so what the source has to say now carries additional credibility.
What's interesting about Friday Night right now isn't the storyline; instead we've been scooped about how the project went from a basement-budget independent film to a possible multi-million project that's being courted by the major studios. The 90s have been a testing ground for many indie films and their creators who've later gone on to create larger films for established film studios. People like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Ed Burns and most recently Darren Aronofsky have shown that having less money means nothing: it's having an idea (and getting that idea out there) that counts. With another indie teen vampire film already generating some positive buzz this fall season (that being director/screenwriter Robert A. Masciantonio's Cold Hearts), could Sean-Michael's Friday Night be shaping up to become another hot property?
In the source's own words, here's the story on how Friday Night was originally conceived and where it currently stands:
"Sean-Michael, a unproduced and unagented 20-year-old San Francisco writer/director wrote Friday Night as the ultimate ode to teen 80's movies with a dash of vampires and he started to go about making this movie with 300 grand given to him by his family. It was to be filmed this August and then to be taken on the festival route. So he gets Noah Hathaway (Atrjue from The Neverending Story) and Corey Haim to be in it -- the definition of 80's teen icon. The special F/X were to be handled by the CG boutique FX house Max Ink Cafe (see MaxInkCafe.com) and Vincent Guastini who did the makeup FX for Dogma and the new Night Of the Living Dead.
"So it's in indie pre-production in JUNE, but wait, the script leaks to someone and someone gets it and then a couple indie studios are interested in the movie, so preproduction holds out and Sean Michael takes in some big meetings in LA.
"Of course then ENTER the agents. Sean signs with the Gersh Agency, now it's towards the end of summer.......will Sean make the movie? NO.
"The film does not get made on the indie level, cause with Gersh now in the picture it bypass even the indie studio interest and goes straight up to the big boys at the major studios.
"It's a pretty amazing story. Tarantino move over.
"Which brings us to NOW:
"Now from what I can get it looks like at least 2 producers under the mega umbrella of the studio Disney are interested in this project. One's at Touchstone and the other at Dimension. Both want to recast the movie with hot younger stars cause they feel this is on the same level as Scream and could go that big. They both are also a tad iffy on letting the 20-year-old Sean-Michael direct it. It's a double edged sword as my one friend explained: On one hand they could find the next Spielberg and form a relationship with a future great director or they could have a wonderfully young talented screenwriter ruin his own script by directing it."
That was all the info the source could provide at the time. "It just seems people are very tight lipped about this in the real world due to the sensitive nature of how it all came about," the scooper said. Perhaps there are others out there that could contribute to this page and we can track the development of the project. We did a bit of snooping around the web and found that Internet Movie Database's listing for Friday Night had additional information, including a pretty-funny quote excerpt from the script as well as more detailed plot description.
[Project announcement by 'IamNC17' and confirmed by anonymous sources; project first announced by Garth Franklin on Dark Horizons.]
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