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'Candy' Director Prepares for '30 Days of Night'
David Slade
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David Slade hopes to shoot vampire pic this summer in New Zealand
Speaking to reporters on the eve of the release of his first film "Hard Candy," director David Slade reveals that he's expecting to begin production on his adaptation of Steve Niles comic hopefully in July. The Sony-based production will shoot in New Zealand under the watch of Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures shingle. Earlier drafts of the script came from Niles himself and from "Collateral" scribe Stuart Beattie, but Slade plans to shoot a new draft by his "Candy" collaborator Brain Nelson.
"There is a degree of responsibility to Ben Templesmith's artwork, which will be reflected in the production design, absolutely," Slade says. "There were three drafts written before I came to this project and I believe that Brian's draft is the most faithful to Steve Niles' writing and Steve has been in the loop."
Even within the comic fan community, there's something of a sense that the premise of "30 Days of Night" was better than the execution of the book and Slade notes that a literal scene-by-scene adaptation wouldn't run much longer than 15 or 20 minutes.
"We're faced with a tremendous task, which is making a scary vampire film. There aren't many of them. You can count them on two fingers," he says referring to "Salem's Lot" and "Nosferatu." "The rest of them, they fall into all kinds of traps. We're going to try to do our best to make a third one and one of the ways we have to do it is to be more naturalistic than the graphic novel, because it's very over-the-top."
Slade, a British music video vet whose credits include clips for The Aphex Twin and System of a Down, says that no casting has been done on the project and he admits that the July 11 production start may be pushed back. One thing he hopes to do, though, is avoid any post-production delays brought about by the MPAA.
When asked about the challenges of transferring an extremely gory book to the big screen in an R rated format, Slade responds quickly, "God knows." His main plan is to make "30 Days" more "visceral than viscous."
"Viscous is something that is goopy and disgusting and visceral is something that just hits you in the chest, which I believe the graphic novel did when I read it."
"Hard Candy" goes into limited release on Friday, April 14.
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