Leprechaun Director Mark Jones Looks Back on the Franchise’s 30-Year Legacy

This year marks 30 years since the release of Leprechaun, a unique horror-comedy that has earned seven sequels to date. While the film wasn’t a tremendous success when it first landed in theaters, its blend of humor and terror resonated with audiences, at least enough for its legacy to not only still be felt, but enough for Lionsgate to announce earlier this year that a reboot was in the works. Mark Jones directed that original installment, which starred Warwick Davis in the titular role and also starred a then-unknown Jennifer Aniston. All eight Leprechaun films are currently streaming on Hulu.

The original film is described, “When a greedy tourist steals a Leprechaun’s pot of gold, the evil sprite goes on a murderous mission to get it back.”

“I think part of it was we didn’t try to take ourselves too seriously. I put the elements that I knew … I came from Saturday morning, I started out writing Scooby-Doo cartoons, and I was, by the way, I was eight years old when I directed Leprechaun, so I wanted to make that clear,” Jones recently recalled to ComicBook.com about why the film has earned a lasting legacy. “So I really, really wanted to make it. I just didn’t want another direct-to-video, ’90s slasher movie. I just think the kids found that, and not just kids, but I mean younger people in their 30s, the people who were going to the theater. So I think it was the tone. And I even lit it with some color, and my DP, Levy Isaacs, who was terrific, he got it. We did a live-action Scooby-Doo-ish thing. If you notice the costumes on the kids or the wardrobe is colorful. So that was planned.” 

He added, “I did not think it would be going into number nine. If I did, I would’ve made a much better deal in the beginning, on the first one. So no, I didn’t see it [becoming a fan-favorite], but once it got released … And I was killed by the critics, they didn’t understand what we were doing. So they think, they’re comparing it to The Exorcist and big studio pictures. Now, they got it. It took 20 years, but they realized that it’s a fun, cult classic. So I couldn’t be happier.”

Leprechaun was released a year before Aniston debuted in Friends, with no one knowing how successful the sitcom would be or that Aniston would become such a sensation in subsequent years. Even though Aniston didn’t become a breakout hit after Leprechaun, Jones knew almost immediately that she had something special.

“When she walked in the room and we were looking at 200 girls, and she was really a nobody, she had done a couple of episodic things, but she walked in and I turned to my producing partner and I said, ‘Boy, I hope she can act,’ because she just had something in the room. She had a charisma. I mean, incredibly, an aura,” the director confirmed. “And I said, ‘There’s just something about her,’ and she could act.”

He continued, “I actually fought the studio, it was down to her and another girl, and they wanted the other girl, and I said, ‘We have to have Jennifer.’ So I did win that battle. Of course, the studio now takes credit, but I did see it and I saw it on the set. Did I think she [would become] as big as she did? No, I would’ve kept her phone number so I could have borrowed some money from her if I knew she was going to get that big. But no, she did have, I thought, something very special.”

All eight films in the Leprechaun franchise are now streaming on Hulu. Stay tuned for updates on the reboot of the Leprechaun series.

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