“It all feels like it unfolded the way it should, it’s just not always pleasant when it’s happening,” he says of his exit from Scream, sending support to those still involved with the film as he talks about his movie Drop, fulfilling his late father Michael Landon’s horror dreams, and Happy Death Day 3.
When one door closes, another opens — something director Christopher Landon says “feels like a fact” after he signed onto his new movie, Drop, shortly after his dreams of making a Scream flick fell apart.
Landon’s latest, a tight thriller following Meghann Fahy on a first date from hell, sees him back in the director’s chair for another genre film, following the successes of Freaky and the Happy Death Day movies.
It also comes after he was briefly attached to direct Scream VII, following the exit of directing duo Radio Silence. But when star Melissa Barrera was fired from the franchise over social media posts about the Israel-Hamas conflict, Landon soon left the project as well — insisting to Vanity Fair that he “did not fire her” and chose to leave over the “hate and abuse” that came his way at that time. It was so bad, he said, his family was getting death threats.
“You look back on any hardship or difficult thing you went through and, in hindsight, hopefully you look at it and go, ‘Oh, it was supposed to happen,'” Landon told TooFab in an interview Tuesday at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles.
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“I was supposed to make Drop and not Scream VII. And Kevin Williamson was supposed to make Scream VII,” he said, referring to original Scream scribe Williamson taking over as director.
“It all feels like it unfolded the way it should; it’s just not always pleasant when it’s happening,” Landon continued. “I look back on the whole thing now feeling very good about all of it and wishing everyone well. It was a really fraught situation with a lot of feelings and a lot of complicated feelings. I’m glad it’s in the past.”
Despite how messy things got, Landon is adamant “we all love each other” — as Williamson showed love on a recent post from Landon celebrating the release of Drop, while Landon shared support for Williamson’s Scream on social media.
“I think everyone is sort of focused on supporting each other and cheering each other on instead of tearing each other apart and trying to point fingers and do all that s–t; it doesn’t do any good,” he added.
Landon had the Hollywood premiere of Drop later in the day at the Chinese Theater, somewhere the director said he, “as a shy, insecure gay kid” growing up, “never dreamed” would happen.
“I grew up in that theater. I saw The Empire Strikes Back in that theater. I saw a lot of movies in that theater. Once I decided I wanted to make movies for a living, too, it really was like my temple,” he told TooFab. “It’s like winning an Oscar for me, to be there. It’s a really special moment for me.”
On Instagram, Landon, 50, also said he wished his parents “were here to see me” for this career milestone. The director is the son of the late Little House on the Prairie star Michael Landon and actress Lynn Noe.
“My dad was a hardcore horror fan and he was the reason I even got into the genre. He and I watched horror movies a lot together; he thought they were so cool,” Landon shared with TooFab. “He would always say, ‘I wish I could make these, but I’m in a box, creatively.'”
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“So I always kind of viewed my whole career as like an alter ego of his, an extension of what he wanted to do but couldn’t do,” he added of his career. “My mother hated [horror movies]. She hated my obsession with them. She thought I was doing to become a serial killer.”
While he didn’t become one, his movies have featured quite a few, including Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U. After years of fans pleading for a third film — or possible crossover with Landon’s other slasher, Freaky — he and star Jessica Rothe recently confirmed a third film, or something, is finally in the works.
“Something is brewing! We’re finally like, the door’s gotten pushed open again and we’re having those conversations and I hope it happens,” Landon revealed. “I’ve had the same idea, it hasn’t been a changing thing. It’s been a very fixed thing and that’s why we were so excited about it, because it really is sort of a conclusion to the trilogy and it takes the time loop sub-genre in a very new direction, which I was excited about.”
Blending genres — like horror and sci-fi for Happy Death Day — is also something which really excited Landon. When asked whether he plans to stay in the horror/thriller arena, he said that while there’s “other stuff I would love to do” and “definitely want to do,” he’s already started dipping his toes in other genres via his spookier projects.
“My Netflix movie, We Have a Ghost, that was a family film. Like if ET had a baby with Poltergeist. It was my Amblin movie. I think it’s always about trying to push myself creatively, explore things I’m excited about and try and find things that are really character driven, message driven,” he said of his outlook.
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“That’s another thing that changed a lot for me. Pre-marriage and pre-kids, I think I was relatively cynical about things and had a really dark view and I think that came out in some of the work,” said Landon, who shares two sons with husband Cody Morris.
“And then after getting married and having kids, really thinking about the kinds of things I wanted to put out into the world. It doesn’t mean … look at a movie like Freaky, which is beyond violent and gory and inappropriate, but it also has a really sweet message to it,” said Landon, who added, “If I have a brand, I joke that I make feel-good horror.”
“I think I got a lot of that from my dad. But it’s my way of doing it.”
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For now, Landon is having fun promoting Drop — a movie which it also appears he and the cast had a blast filming. One particularly lively moment on set, according to the director, happened at the last day of filming — when he surprised star Fahy by wearing the same red jumper she dons all film.
“The backstory there is, she lived in that costume. She was in that for a very long time and I had a chat with our costume designer and I said I really feel like, on our last day, I need to wear it in solidarity,” shared Landon, when asked about a photo showing the two rocking identical fits to Instagram.
“On our very last setup of the entire movie, before we all wrapped, I snuck off, put the outfit on and no one knew I was doing it and I walked onto set in that outfit and I was like, ‘Okay guys, we’re ready, let’s go,'” he recalled. “And I remember Meghann, she literally crumpled, she was cracking up. It was really, really, really funny.”
“And the highlight of it for me was, we had our wrap party, and an unnamed, totally random crew member — like a big burly dude — came up to me at the bar like, ‘You looked pretty good in that!'” he added. “It was really funny. The crew had a big laugh.”
As for who wore it better, he simply quipped, “You look at the photo and you decide!”
Drop hits theaters April 11.
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