Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t know she was about to tackle three extra “Halloween” films when she mentioned sure to David Gordon Green’s 2018 movie, the sequel to her 1978 movie.
During a SXSW panel titled, “If Not Now, When, if Not Me, Who? Pivoting and Manifesting,” Curtis opened up about filmmaking and her profession as an actress and producer. She first named her appreciation for Jason Blum.
“The only reason I am sitting in this chair today is because of Jason. Jason Blum, who runs Blumhouse, is the one who brought back the ‘Halloween’ movies,” she mentioned. However, when she obtained the decision, she thought it was one film and didn’t hear till means later that they had been planning on doing extra.
“If they had come to me and said it’s going to be a trilogy, I don’t think I would have said yes,” she mentioned. “Jason Blum is notoriously cheap. How do you make low-budget movies? You don’t pay people. That’s the model.”
So, she used it to her benefit.
“While we were editing and doing the mix, David said, ‘You know it’s a trilogy.’ I was like, ‘Uh, no.’ I went to Jason Blum and said, ‘I have some ideas, maybe you could give me a first look deal, just pay me a little money,’” she remembers. “I said to Jason, ‘How about a little development deal?’ And I owed him two ‘Halloween’ movies, so what was he gonna say?”
Curtis wished the additional cash to pay Russell Goldman, a filmmaker who was working along with her to try to get “Mother Nature” made. Goldman now works in growth for Curtis’s Comet Pictures, and he’s making his directorial function debut at SXSW with “Sender.” The premiere would be the first time Curtis ever sees the Comet Pictures emblem on the massive display.
“Jason Blum gave me a vanity deal,” she says, referencing an earlier second of the dialog the place they mentioned how each actor takes the producer credit score otherwise. She added that Blum doubtless by no means anticipated she’d then name him for a number of initiatives. For instance, Curtis heard an NPR story about a faculty bus driver and trainer who saved 22 kids and mentioned she wished to provide it. This 12 months, the Apple TV movie “The Lost Bus” is nominated on the Oscars for Best Visual Effects.
Later within the dialog, the moderator introduced up that the Academy is seemingly lastly respecting the horror style with the large quantity of affection for “Sinners.” Curtis famous that though she’s a Scream Queen, she doesn’t love the style. But she will have a main appreciation for it.
“I’m in love with the independent filmmaking aspect of the genre,” she mentioned, including that she’s so thrilled to see how various it has turn out to be — showcasing totally different genders and sexuality, or, how she places it, “the words that Donald Trump is trying to erase from our language.”
Curtis added: “So because of that, the genre aspect, I appreciate, and I owe my life to the genre, but I don’t have to pretend to you that I’m a genre girl, and that I love it.”
She later opened up about “Scarpetta,” which she had additionally known as Blum about, when she realized Patricia Cornwell’s books had by no means made it to the display and wished them. But she by no means deliberate on starring in it.
Curtis met Kidman years earlier than on the Academy Awards; Kidman had mentioned to her, “I see you. I see who you are. I see what you do. I see how you do it. And I really like it, and I want you to continue doing it.” So once they re-met years later and Kidman requested, “And you’re in it?” Curtis couldn’t say no.
“I really didn’t want to be in an hour TV show, because the hours are awful,” Curtis added. “My only desire is to be made a sitcom!”
