Haunted Mansion Director Justin Simien Shouts Out Unsung Heroes of Production (Exclusive)

Justin Simien shares kind words for the editor and composer of Disney's Haunted Mansion.

By Jamie Jirak

Haunted Mansion is hitting theaters next week, and the new film is based on the beloved Disneyland ride of the same name. The first reactions to the movie recently hit the Internet, and they tease laughs and scares in addition to a lot of heart. Like many Disney projects, a lot of people worked on Haunted Mansion, so ComicBook.com recently asked director Justin Simien if there were any unsung heroes of the production. 

"I got to shout out my editor, Philip Bartell," Simien shared. "We were in post for a long time. There's a lot of screening and testing and trying and experimentation on a movie like this, especially for Disney. That's a big part of their process, and we really, I couldn't have done it without him."

He added, "And also my composer, Kris Bowers, who I've been working with since my TV show, Dear White People, and he has his magical ability to take classical score, film score, jazz, pop, and just sort of blend it. He took the dun-dun-dun dun-dun-dun from Grim Grinning Ghosts and interpreted that into all of the characters' themes. And you would never know that those all came from the same song until they all come together. And it's just so, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Those are two folks that I don't talk about enough."

Is Haunted Mansion Too Scary For Kids?

During our chat with Simien, he revealed Disney was concerned some moments in the upcoming film would be too scary. However, kids in the test audience felt differently. 

"There were some things that the studio thought would be too scary," Simien revealed. "And then we started to screen the movie and the first folks in, we'd be like, 'Is the movie too scary?' Kids would raise their hands like, 'No, I can handle it. We want more.' And so eventually there were things that I truly didn't think were, especially involving the Hat Box Ghost, and especially with some of the jump scares, that I wasn't sure if it was really going to make it through, but it did because the kids wanted more of it. And I kept saying my first Disney movies, those are still the scariest movies I've ever seen. So I talk about Pinocchio becoming a donkey, Snow White getting lost in the forest, these things are terrifying. Like Simba losing Mufasa, these are scary moments." 

Related:

"And kids can handle it. And if you just respect them enough to handle the story, they can do it. And we just leaned into that," he added. "Life is scary." 

Haunted Mansion lands in theaters on July 28th.

Trending Now: