Filmmaker Courtney Solomon has produced a swathe of films over the years, a great many of them in the horror genre, having been one of the producers behind the After Dark Horror brand that brought a bunch of independent horror films to theaters and home video, giving the genre a gimmicky boost before the streaming boom changed the game of distribution. Solomon has also directed some notable films, including the 2000 fantasy film adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, which didn’t go over so well at the time of its release, but deserves to be reevaluated on its own terms. Having produced the recent sword and sorcery reboot of Red Sonja, starring Matilda Lutz, as well as the shot back-to-back trilogy of three chapters of The Strangers from director Renny Harlin, Solomon discusses the challenges of rebooting the slasher IP as a three-act film, and with Chapter 2 out this week, The Movie Elite caught up with him to discuss his work on the trilogy, as well as his involvement in the aforementioned titles.
10 years ago, I had a chat with you in person at the last After Dark Horror festival of the 8 Horror Films to Die For over at the AMC Universal Citywalk. I was kind of curious … I really do miss the After Dark Horror movies. I went to see them all every year and there was even the After Dark Action series. Is that ever going to come back? That year, 10 years ago, was the last gasp of that whole concept.
You know, I haven’t even given that so much thought. It’s been such a long time. I still have the people that I know who worked at that company. They were very heavily invested in that. It might be something worth looking at. It’s a different world now. Maybe it would be a different format now with streaming. Back in the day, it was different. Maybe there would be a way to combine the two together. That’s actually interesting. I don’t know. I’m going to ask my people and see what they think of that. That’s an interesting idea. If it happens, you’ll get an honorary seat there, my friend.
I love the action series you did, the five films.
I enjoyed those. Those were fun to make. It’s hard to make action movies down and dirty for that kind of money, by the way. It’s really hard. We had a good time. We had Dolph Lundgren, JCVD, Michael Jai White, Scott Adkins. I’ve got stories to tell you, but I can’t tell you because somebody might come and get me. But it was a blast.
Regarding The Strangers … it’s very ambitious to do three as one, or one as three. This hasn’t really been done before. The only example I can come up with is The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit because otherwise this hasn’t been attempted before. For horror, it’s very unique. Talk a little bit about the challenge of making one movie that’s three segments or chapters long, and doing them back-to-back.
First, the simple impetus to do it in the first place was a business decision. My partner, a friend of mine, happened upon the rights, and they are business people, not filmmakers. So, they said, “You’ve made a lot of horror movies, the After Dark horror fest, 8 Films to Die For, An American Haunting, and these other horror movies … so would you do this?” The Strangers is a coveted cow, man. When I thought about it, I thought of telling it as the story of the ultimate Final Girl. Okay? Taking the basis of reality to create that character. Not, like as fictionalized as we often do in horror movies. They’re always slightly over the top, but we forgive it because it is what it is, but the average person put in a real situation, like in the original Strangers situation, that can really happen to all of us. I’ve read all the fan comments, “Oh, they would’ve killed her and stabbed her in the second act … ” I’m making up the bad versions of the comments, but the real people when they actually get to the point when they’re actually going to kill another human being, and if you’re just a normal human being, to kill someone is a big stretch. It’s not an easy thing to do, and our society has not trained us to do that. Our society has trained us to do the opposite, quite frankly, even in dire situations. So, that was what was interesting to me, telling a story of what happened if I used the original Strangers timeline if Liv Tyler lives and she’s stuck in a small town and can’t get out of it for the next two movies, okay? Where is she psychologically and emotionally if you walk into original Strangers 2? After what she’s been through … if you’re staying real? Right? If you’re not staying real, then you can play, play, play. But if you’re trying to stay real, how does that work? How does the necessity of survival kick in for you? Right? In a realistic way. I needed three movies to actually build that character in a credible way to hopefully achieve the goal in the end. Where you as an audience look at it and go “That’s an earned final girl.” She gets to go in the Hall of Fame of Final Girls. That was the impetus for the whole thing. So, it needed that much time. We couldn’t do that in one movie. Right? There wouldn’t have been enough character beats. They killed us for Chapter 1, anyway. They did, but that was for a different reason. It was because we remade a movie that everyone loved so much. We made some choices, and we called it Act 1 of a Three-Act movie. Three Chapters, each chapter, makes another act, but it’s one movie, right? You want to judge this movie, you’ve got to watch the whole movie. You don’t watch the first 30 minutes and turn it off and say “The movie sucked.” Maybe the first 30 minutes sucked, but what about the next 60 minutes? If you don’t watch the whole thing, you haven’t seen our version of The Strangers.
Director Renny Carlin, Madelaine Petsch, and Producer Courtney Solomon in The Strangers – Chapter 2. Photo Credit: John Armour
The first one did pretty well financially.
It did fantastically. We didn’t make it for two cents. It did great!
I was very pleasantly surprised by its performance, but what if it hadn’t done well? What if it had bombed? What was the backup plan?
You never really know. That’s the truth. With there being so many options to put out a movie, with streaming and everything else. With having a first movie that had a big marketing campaign and spend on it, you never really know. It’s all determined on box office. If it had done no box office, the second one would probably have gone to streaming. That would be my guess. The intent was always to have three movies in the movie theaters. Like bringing television to movie theaters: “To be continued … ” They were supposed to be released much tighter together so you could remember the one that came before. Maybe three or four months in between. So, within a year, all three would have been released. What happened was that the first one did so well, and we said there were things we really wanted to do in Chapter 2 and 3 that, based on what the audience said after seeing Chapter 1 – and we agreed with some of the things they said – like, let us do it. Let us do what we wanted to do that we weren’t able to do and let us tell this story. Lionsgate is such a great studio that they gave us the money to do it. They gave us the money and fully backed us. It’s been awesome. So, in that way, we were able to go back and enhance 2 and 3. I feel like I’m so excited. Don’t get me wrong: I like our Chapter 1. When I read some of those comments, I go “Shit. We could have done this better.” I don’t agree with the comments about us remaking the first one so much as we just wanted to use the best example of The Strangers for a whole new audience. To tell the rest of the story, to see what happens the next day or the next few days. I like our first movie. Republicans and democrats are on debating it online and both can’t wait for Chapter 2. They loved Chapter 1, and a lot of these people never saw the original Strangers. Then, we have fans of the original who call our Chapter 1 “trash, garbage, never going to see the second one.” I’ve never seen that kind of divide over a movie, if I’m honest with you.
I wanted to bring up a movie you recently produced that I actually saw in a theater recently, and I enjoyed it. I was looking so much forward to seeing it for years, and that’s Red Sonja.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Say something about producing Red Sonja and your involvement with the film. You’re clearly a sword and sorcery guy because you made the original Dungeons and Dragons.
That’s right. Look, I loved the Red Sonja character from day 1. It’s an awesome character. She’s so timely for the times we’re living in, obviously. They’d been trying to get this movie done for 10 years. You probably know the history. So, I came in and helped them sort out those rights so that the movie could actually be made. Then, on the making of the movie, I wasn’t there that much because I was making The Strangers at the same time. They were in Bulgaria, and we were in Slovakia, so we were pretty close to each other. My partner Mark Canton was there. Then, in edits I gave notes on the edits and stuff like that. They did a great job. Those movies are tough to make on a budget as well. I thought Matilda Lutz was phenomenal. She’s an amazing actress, and I love her. I loved Robert Sheehan as well, he was actually a really cool villain and actually a fresh type, and I really like that. I wish that it had been given more money to build that world to let us see the scope of that universe a little more. People that I watch the movie with, they have a really good time with it. That’s the ultimate, most important thing. As a filmmaker, people are always wanting more, what do you want me to tell you? We always want more money to add things. I just told you about how it was with Lionsgate on The Strangers: “Give us more money!” I loved being a part of Red Sonja. I’m so happy, to me, to finally get it made out of that ten years of hell. Like, that is very satisfying, and then to go watch it in a movie theater and knowing that I got it out of hell. I got this out of hell! (Laughing.)
Look, the Dungeons and Dragons movie that you directed deserves to reevaluated. At the time, when it came out, it was on the cusp of the renaissance of sword and sorcery films of the 2000’s. You hit it like two seconds too soon.
Ahead of it’s time. You’re dead on the money. You’re very insightful, David. Look, I wish I knew then what I know now. What I know now as a filmmaker is vastly different. I knew Dungeons and Dragons … I’ve never told my story of Dungeons and Dragons. There’s an odyssey of a story, and nobody knows it. It’s never been told. It’s just not out there. Listen, when we made that movie, it was … people weren’t there yet. You’re 100% right. That was the biggest thing. It was ahead of its time, but when you go and look at it, it was fun for what it was. We had a whole other version of it, a different version, a different script, a darker version. It was much more D&D. From when I was a little kid that was four years old, that’s when D&D first came out. My brother was ten years older, and he and his friends started playing D&D in the first basic set, okay? The very first one with the purple box. I would sit there and watch them go through every campaign together for like two years. I do know my D&D, okay? It’s ingrained in me, and all I can say … and I do love the new movie that came out. It took a certain tone, and they definitely spent, spent, spent to make that. They did a great job. As a D&D’er for life, I was just thrilled to somehow see what was my original vision from being a 19 year old being in my bedroom to getting those rights and having no clue to what I was doing whatsoever, to now having seen it turned into that … that’s super fulfilling for me. I’d like to see it evolve further. Now, what I think the last movie did was bring it to the mainstream audience to some extent as well, and that justifies having more D&D movies. Right? In the way a studio looks at it, financially. I feel like, but then the studio looks at it and goes, “Well, it did well, but by the cost of it, not as well as we would’ve liked. So, we’re going to put the breaks on it of a second.” I hope they find a way to wrangle it forward because now is the right time to do another D&D movie. For sure.
