Studio 666 Writers on How the Foo Fighters Horror Movie Came to Be
The Foo Fighters dropped a surprise horror movie earlier this year, and while it spent a little time in theaters, and was available to watch digitally as a premium home rental (read: $20 or so for a 48-hour rental window), the movie just officially came out as a digital sale and standard rental, allowing more fans to get a look at how Dave Grohl and company would go about making their own slasher movie. The idea of the film, that the Foo Fighters were recording an album in an old mansion, only to discover it was haunted, feels like the kind of wild idea that KISS would have, and lends itself to the same sort of fun, campy movie you would expect...but the scares, and especially the kills, are classic slasher all the way.
Written by Jeff Buhler (Nightflyers, The Prodigy) and Rebecca Hughes (Der Vulkan, TV's Cracking Up), the movie explores a question that nobody knew they wanted answered: what would grunge legend Dave Grohl be like, if he was possessed by a demon? But while that sounds (especially given the KISS comparisons) like a very corporate, very calculated project, it actually came together in exactly the way you would hope: the band had the location, realized it was creepy, and Grohl thought a horror movie could be fun.
"The band had been recording their tenth album in the house, that is the house in the movie," Buhler explained. "So the whole idea that they're going to a house to try to make a different-sounding album was already real life. While they were there, they noticed that this weird old mansion was actually kind of creepy, and Dave started getting this idea in his head like, 'Wow, we could do a horror movie here.' They had leased it for a year, and they were coming to the end of the recording process, and he was really kind of warming up to the idea of doing an actual movie. They weren't sure like, would it be a video, or a long-form video, or what? And then he's like, 'I want to do a real horror movie.'"
"He's got a lot of friends in the business; obviously he's got a lot of friends everywhere, and he came up with the bare bones of an idea," Buhler continued. "And some of the kills that are in the movie were thought up early. He's got a very good friend, Tony Gardner, who has worked on music videos, who came up with some of the kills. So, they were already batting ideas around and then they needed a writer. So I got that call, and immediately thought of Rebecca. Rebecca and I have worked, together and separately, on and off for years. She's just got a great sense of humor, super-sharp wit...and, so it seemed like a great combination."
It didn't hurt that, once Buhler reached out to her, it turned out Hughes was more than a little familiar with the band's work; she actually had met them personally on a number of occasions.
"There was a great coincidence for me, because I had toured with the band as a guest of the drummer of Eagles of Death Metal, a band that was opening for them," Hughes explained. "My very good friend is Samantha Maloney, a rock drummer, and she was drumming at the time for Eagles of Death Metal, and the Eagles were invited to open for the Foo Fighters back in the mid-Aughts and she invited me out as her guest. So I actually had met the band, because I toured with them for two weeks in the UK, just as a guest of the opening band, doing nothing but sort of taking some video and whatever, just lounging around. So I got to know them. And so, it was kind of a great coincidence, and I already sort of knew them a little bit, and knew their personalities a little bit."
Studio 666 is now available to buy and rent on digital platforms. The movie is coming to DVD and Blu-ray on May 24.