EXCLUSIVE: Mother’s Day Hits Theaters May 2012

“The problem with Mother’s Day, it’s an awesome movie and I’m very, very proud of it, we sold it to a company that was going to release it in 2011. The company basically went bankrupt, or there was a lawsuit, but it prevented Mother’s Day and three other movies from coming out. We finally got the rights to the movie back, and the new company that purchased it decided that it would make more sense to put it out on the date it’s based on. So now we’re having to wait until 2012 for the release.”

“I just finished The Barrens. It’s pretty awesome. It’s a completely different movie than I’ve ever done before. It’s a movie I’ve wanted to make since Saw II. I’ve had two passion projects in my life. I guess every movie I do is a passion project, but these two movies, from leaving film school, I had to make. The first one was Repo! the Genetic Opera! and the second one is The Barrens. I went away trying to pitch Repo and The Barrens, those were the first things I was ever out in Hollywood pitching, and luckily I’ve had some success in my career where I’ve been allowed to make Repo, and again I was able to make The Barrens, which was supposed to be the movie I was going to make after Saw II. The original producer who I was working on it with, was a guy named Gregg Hoffman, who died. He was one of the producers on the Saw films and, after Saw II came out, he said, ‘What do you want to do next?’ I said I want to do this movie about the Jersey devil called The Barrens. About three or four weeks later, he died and that movie kind of got scrapped. It’s been something always in the back of my head that I always wanted to make. It’s kind of a dream come true, to actually go out and make it. Listen, I’m a huge horror nerd and horror fan, and I wanted to make my version of a monster movie, but I didn’t want to make it like a sci-fi, up all night kind of thing. I wanted to make it extremely emotional and dramatic as well. I think the problem is a lot of the monster movies make it about the monster, and, by doing that, it’s hard to suspend disbelief because you know that monster isn’t real. You know it’s a guy in a suit or a CGI creature, because it’s all about the monster. I wanted to make the movie about the family as scary and horrific as the monster is. It’s this kind of weird, dysfunctional family who goes into the woods, and you’re as worried about the family, before the monster comes in, than you are when the monster actually does come in. It’s kind of this dueling story of a dysfunctional family, set against the Jersey devil’s backdrop.”