«A Quiet Place» is the latest horror hit from production company Platinum Dunes.<\/b>
\nWarning: Mild spoiler below if you haven’t seen «A Quiet Place»
This weekend Paramount\u2019s new horror movie, \u201cA Quiet Place,\u201d about a family forced to live in silence to hide from monsters that kill anything that makes a sound, won the weekend box office after earning an impressive $50 million domestically \u2014 exceeding all industry projections.
Made for $17 million, the third (and by far most successful) directing effort by actor John Krasinski snuck up on everyone in Hollywood to become the latest hit horror movie. And according to the producers behind the movie, Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller of Platinum Dunes, no one involved with the movie knew they had a potential hit on their hands until about a month ago. Horror remake kings
Form and Fuller, along with their mega-blockbuster filmmaker friend Michael Bay, started Platinum Dunes in 2001 and quickly made a name for themselves remaking classic horrors like \u201cThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre\u201d (2003), \u201cThe Amityville Horror\u201d (2005), \u201cFriday the 13\u201d (2009), and \u201cA Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). They made a nice profit on all of them \u2014 \u201cChainsaw Massacre\u201d made $107 million worldwide on a $9.5 million budget, \u201cAmityville\u201d made $108 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million, and \u201cElm Street\u201d made over $115 million worldwide on a $35 million budget.
But Platinum Dunes\u2019 comfort zone will always be horror, and it proved this weekend it\u2019s a major player in the genre. Krasinski’s power play
Screenwriters Bryan Woods and Scott Beck wrote the \u201cA Quiet Place\u201d script on spec and 18 months ago, while deep into preproduction on \u201cJack Ryan,\u201d Form and Fuller got a call from their agents at WME that they wanted to pass along the script, which they described as a \u201chigh concept\u201d genre movie.
\u201cThey send it over and the script is 67 or 68 pages long, and I’m like, ‘This is a movie? This is like a one-hour pilot,’\u201d Form told Business Insider. \u201cWhen we went through it you realize there’s no dialogue in the movie. The script had a map of the farm and numbers on a page for a countdown. There were literally pages that were just one number. So it wasn\u2019t even like the script had pages of full text. But the story was there.\u201d
\u201cJohn called back a couple of weeks later and said, ‘I definitely want to play the dad, but I also want to rewrite the script and direct it,\u2019\u201d Form said. He and Fuller quickly agreed.
The project became even more attractive when Krasinski\u2019s wife, Emily Blunt, signed on to play the role of the mother. On paper, it all seemed right. But would audiences get a \u201csilent\u201d horror movie? A test screening leads to lots of anxiety
Form and Fuller said they only did one test screening of the movie before its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March, and it got mixed reactions because of one obvious omission.
\u201cThe big problem was there was no creature in the test,\u201d Form said. \u201cIt was either plates or a motion-capture actor. Sometimes John was in the motion capture suit playing the monster. In that basement scene he was the creature down there.\u201d
Not having a creature in the test screening was most apparent in the scene where the monster runs away from the daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), because her hearing aid hurts its sensitive ears.
\u201cWhen her hearing aid goes off in the cornfield you have her in the shot but there was nothing behind her, so the audience did not understand that a creature came up behind her,\u201d Form said.
But that scene worked incredibly well at the SXSW screening, when audience could see the terrifying creatures brought to CGI life by Industrial Light and Magic.
However, the uncertainty leading up to the night of that screening had everyone on edge. Though Paramount studio executives had seen cuts and liked what they saw, as Form put it, \u201c1,200 strangers in a theater can tell you something very different.\u201d
\u201cIf there was optimism it was self-created,\u201d Fuller said of the lead-up to the SXSW screening. \u201cUsually when you go into a screening like that you know what you have, this was totally blind. It was crazy. We were all very apprehensive. When the movie ended and the people started cheering I put my head on my wife’s shoulder and cried because it was so fraught with tension and emotion. Because we had no idea.\u201d
\u201cA Quiet Place\u201d is the latest example that audiences will come out to theaters for more than just superhero movies and \u201cStar Wars.\u201d And though Platinum Dunes has no problem getting into the blockbuster game \u2014 it\u2019s one of the production companies on the upcoming first Transformers spin-off movie, \u201cBumblebee\u201d \u2014 the company is also striving to develop genre projects that are high in originality and will attract studios.
\u201cIt’s a miracle that a major studio made a movie that is practically devoid of dialogue,\u201d said Fuller, who wouldn\u2019t address the possibility of a sequel to \u201cA Quiet Place\u201d (though with its big opening weekend number, it would be shocking if Paramount doesn\u2019t want one). \u201cBut I also think studios recognize they have to make concepts that get people to leave their homes, so as producers it’s incumbent upon us to find things that will get people to go watch a movie in a movie theater. So if you find a strong concept, I think they will always get behind it.\u201d
«A Quiet Place» is currently playing in theaters.<\/p>\n

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Sentiment rank: -0.3<\/div>\n

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