It really doesn’t get cooler than this! A bunch of stars from your favorite TV shows, like 13 Reasons Why, The Vampire Diaries, Shadowhunters and Never Have I Ever teamed up and made an entire horror movie while stuck at home amid the coronavirus quarantine.
So how did it work? Well, director Nick Simon not only sent equipment and lights to Luke Baines, Claire Holt, Darren Barnet, Timothy Granaderos, Emmy Raver-Lampman and Katherine McNamara — who were all in quarantine at their respective homes — but the stars even had to do their own makeup before setting up each Zoom call.
“The whole movie has been written, produced, packaged, shot within quarantine. Now we’re in postproduction, and I had a first cut of the whole film done on Friday,” Nick told Vanity Fair in a recent interview.
Right now, the film is called The Untitled Horror Movie, which is “part of the joke,” according to Luke, who actually came up with the movie’s concept. The entire film is horror and comedy mashed up into one, and it follows young start who realize their TV shows have been canceled via video chat. In order to stay employed, they decide to make their own horror film and end up summoning an evil spirit.
“We basically started writing it, and talking about it. And then I said, ‘Why don’t we just do this movie now?’” Nick, who cowrote it with Luke said. “If we could figure out a way to do this now while everybody is in lockdown, it could be really interesting.”
He added, “We started calling some actors that Luke knew and said, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing this movie for no money, and we’re going to shoot it ourselves.’ And they all said the same thing, which was, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun because we’re not doing anything right now, and this sounds like it’d be a great distraction.'”
Once everything was all set up, it only took them seven days to shoot the entire film. Plus, by the end of it, Luke, Claire, Darren, Timothy, Emmy and Katherine all had some brand new skills under their belts!
“Every one of these actors, in their own right, is a lead of their own Netflix show or something,” Nick explained. “These are the type of actors who are constantly getting everything done for them. Here they had to light themselves, mic themselves, shoot themselves. They did everything themselves. As a director, I guess I would sit back and really just direct it like a play.”
When can we expect to see this quarantine film in action? Well, there’s no release date just yet, but we really hope they announce it soon because boy, does it sound like it’s going to be good!
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