David F. Sandberg helmed the well-regarded horror movies Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation, which, like many directors before him, opened the door to much bigger projects. In his case he took the leap over to DC’s Extended Universe to direct two Shazam! films, and the experience was so bad for him that he had planned to get away from major IPs. At least, until the script for Until Dawn came along.
While the first Shazam! movie was generally well regarded and a reasonable box office success, the sequel (which came as DC’s first attempt at a cinematic universe was ending) was slammed hard by critics as well as fans. Sandberg revealed to our sister site, Gamesradar, that he even received death threats from working on the franchise, which led him to decide to avoid IP projects going forward. He said…
I mean, to be honest, fans can get very, very crazy and very angry with you. You can get, like, death threats and everything so after Shazam 2, I was like, ‘I never wanna do another IP-based movie because it’s just not worth it.’ But then I was sent this script, and I was like, ‘Ah, this would be so much fun to do, to do all these kinds of horrors? I kind of have to do it, and hope that the people see what we’re trying to do and like it.’
Certainly, if David F. Sandberg had decided to work on an original project, there wouldn’t be existing fans who feel so invested in the IP that they feel a need to threaten a director. It’s completely understandable why Sandberg would want to steer clear of that. A lot of fandoms can be quite toxic, and the director wouldn’t be the first to avoid working on certain properties to avoid its fans.
Unfortunately, in modern Hollywood, getting away from IP entirely is a fairly tall order. The conventional wisdom is that movies based on existing properties are much surer bets than original concepts, and so those are the movies that tend to get made. Until Dawn, based on the video game of the same name, was the script that David F. Sandberg received. And while he might have initially wanted to avoid it, he ultimately decided it was a movie worth making.
To be fair, Until Dawn is very intentionally the video game equivalent of a classic slasher movie, so making a movie version of it isn’t so much about being faithful to an IP as it is understanding how to make a horror movie. This is certainly something Sandberg knows well.
Thus far, critics are split on Until Dawn, so not everybody thinks this was a movie that Sandberg necessarily needed to make, though our own Until Dawn review found it entertaining enough. We’ll find out this weekend whether or not the audience agrees.
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