A sequel to Spookies is in the works, Bloody Disgusting has exclusively learned.
Frank Farel, co-writer and producer of the 1987 cult classic, announced the news during a live interview with The Barrens Hideout Podcast at Dark Arts Festival in Lincoln, RI over the weekend.
“Remarkably, [Spookies] has done well enough in its revival that I’m at the start of raising financing for a sequel,” Farel revealed. “I’m hoping to get a couple of name horror actors into it. I’m also looking to make a film that is almost an anti-sequel. I don’t just want to rehash what was done the first time.
“I don’t want to even make a typical sequel. I want to make something that’s an animal of its own. It’s different in so many ways. The way I’m doing it, it’s almost intended as a mockery of what happened to our original film.”
Financiers infamously took the movie from Farel and directors Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran in post-production. Another filmmaker, Eugenie Joseph, was hired to helm new scenes that were edited into the previous footage, resulting in the bizarre monster mash that is Spookies.
“To tell the truth, I hated it,” said Farel. “I hated what had been done to the film. It was not our film. It was sort of taken apart and reassembled. It was just not the film we had made. We did not like anything about what was done to it. However, Vinegar Syndrome brought it to Blu-ray, and suddenly the fans took to it.”
In Spookies, a group of stranded friends take shelter in an abandoned mansion, where they meet a myriad of demonic creatures under the control of an evil warlock.
Farel described his sequel script as “a love letter to the fans who have made it possible to make another Spookies movie simply because they responded so positively to the first one that was not readily available to see for many, many years.”
Keep an eye on The Barrens Hideout for the full conversation with Farel in the near future.
The Barrens Hideout host Dustin Wertenberger and Spookies producer Frank Farel