The Foo Fighters’ horror-comedy film hits theaters nationwide Feb. 25.
Something’s wrong with Dave Grohl. With a bad case of writer’s block, the Foo Fighters’ frontman starts losing his mind as he and the rest of the band — guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett, bassist Nate Mendel, drummer Taylor Hawkins and keys player Rami Jaffee — settle into an Encino mansion to record their 10th studio album. At least that’s how the story begins in the new Foo Fighters’ horror-comedy feature film, “Studio 666,” which hits theaters nationwide on Feb.25. The movie was made in the same Encino mansion where Grohl & Co. hunkered down in late 2019 to write and record the album “Medicine at Midnight.” It was screenwriters Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes who helped push the band to star in what would ultimately become a “Spinal Tap” meets “Evil Dead”-style film directed by BJ McDonnell, who had previously worked on the TV series “American Horror Story,” the films “Hatchet III,” “Annabelle Comes Home,” “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” and music videos for the metal band Slayer. “We haven’t had to dive into any heavy dramatic roles in Foo Fighters’ music videos,” Grohl said during a recent phone interview. “They’ve been all just slapstick comedy. With this project, we had a script and we had to act. Granted, we had to act like the Foo Fighters, which we’re pretty good at, but still, it was very different.” Without giving too much away, once the band is inside the home and starting to record, evil takes over. One by one, the band members encounter hilarious and blood-soaked scenarios. These scenes include lots of old-school horror gore courtesy of special effects artist Tony Gardner, who created the prosthetics for Foo Fighters’ “Run” music video. “I have got to be honest: I never heard anyone say the words, ‘Less blood,’” Grohl said with a laugh. “It was usually, ‘More blood! More blood! Keep it going with the blood!’ It was really funny actually because one night I walked out of the house and went down to the street and there was fake blood running down into the sewer. I’m not kidding. I looked down at the curb and it was just a river of blood. It was awesome.” McDonnell said they wanted to limit the use of CGI, so gallons of stage blood were readily available.
