
#Stephen king salem lot movie tv
Romero, Tobe Hooper saw the TV limitations as a beneficial challenge. He was one of the ones who suggested Tobe Hooper.ġ3. Early on the in the project, famed Exorcist director William Friedkin was attached as a producer (and allegedly considered to direct as well). Producer Richard Kobritz even said that after watching that film, he knew he had found their director.ġ2. After Romero left, Tobe Hooper’s massive cult success with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre got him on the producers’ radar. However, upon the switch to TV, he left the project, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to work as freely within the language/violence restrictions that Television had.ġ1. When it was still going to be a theatrical film, director George A. It’s a shame this house didn’t exist in real life, because who wouldn’t wanna live here?!ġ0. So the exterior itself was a very large, very expensive prop. So they needed to build a façade from scratch and attach it to the front of an existing house. While Ferndale had a lot of great locations, the production team struggled to find a building suitable for the Marsten House. Which raises some very interesting questions about him being a chef and coming from a town known for vampires!ĩ. Ferndale is the also the hometown of celebrity chef Guy Fieri. If it looks at all familiar, other films such as Outbreak, Joe Dirt, and The Majestic were also filmed there!Ĩ. Much of the filming took place in Ferndale, California.
#Stephen king salem lot movie movie
The 2004 TV movie remake was randomly shot in Australia!ħ. Though nowadays, it probably would have been filmed in Vancouver, or Louisiana, as these seem to be the cheapest places to film. Despite its Maine setting, Salem’s Lot was shot entirely in southern California, which really wasn’t unusual for the time. In fact, it cost over twice as much as Carrie ($1.8 million), which was released theatrically!Ħ.

Because of this, it was decided that Salem’s Lot would do better as a TV miniseries.ĥ.Its budget was $4 million ($14.2 million in today’s money), which was unusually high for a TV movie at the time. By the time it started preproduction, two other vampire films were already crowding the market in 1979 ( Nosferatu: The Vampire and the Frank Langella Dracula film).

And for four years (1975-1979), the project languished in development hell.Ĥ. Studios were interested in adapting the novel pretty much as soon as it was published. And while it’s compelling and iconic, it is rather dated.ģ. And thus, the genesis of this classic story was born! UP until that point, this was the most famous vampire everyone knew. He wondered what it would be like if a vampire emerged in modern (well 1970’s) New England rather than 1800’s London. Stephen King originally got the idea for “Salem’s Lot” while teaching “Dracula” to a high school English class. These include the main character being a writer, another prominent character being a teacher, and a small town with a dark secret.Ģ. As mentioned earlier, “Salem’s Lot” was King’s second novel (following “Carrie”) and it helped to establish many of the tropes he would later be known for. So in honor of its 40 th anniversary, we thought it would be fun to take a look at 40 fun facts about Salem’s Lot!ġ. And now, 40 years later, it’s still fondly remembered and considered by many to be a horror classic. This entire tradition began back in 1979 with the adaptation of King’s second novel “Salem’s Lot”.

While many of his classic horror novels have been given the cinematic treatment, some proved far too long for the silver screen, and instead were brought to life on the small screen, where they could be broken up into parts. The Stephen King miniseries/TV movie has become something of a long-standing tradition over the last four decades.
