“I wanted to cast people that had worked together a lot,” says Zombie, who shot the film in Hungary. “I couldn’t risk getting on set in Budapest and going, my leads aren’t getting along, they have no chemistry. So that’s why I chose the cast I chose. Jeff Daniel Phillips and Sheri Moon Zombie and Daniel Roebuck, they work together a lot and I knew they would just fall right into it.”
The film’s cast also includes Jorge Garcia, Richard Brake, Catherine Schell, Sylvester McCoy, and Cassandra Petersen (A.K.A. “Elvira”), who plays real estate agent Barbara Carr.
“We’ve been friends with Cassandra for I don’t even know how long,” says Zombie. “She was at our wedding, she was at Sheri’s shower. We’ve been friends with her for at least 25 years. So that was another good person that could come in and fit right in, totally familiar.”
Zombie’s film is different from the original show in one important way: his Munsters is in color!
“I knew that if I went in and demanded ‘This movie’s going to be in black and white or forget it!’ we would not be talking about the Munsters right now, because it would have never happened. I guaran-f—ing-tee it,” says the director. “But what I did do is I made the colors sort of hyper-real. I noticed when the actors were in their makeup and they were just walking around, getting lunch or whatever, they looked like cartoon characters come to life. They were just so insanely colorful. I was like, I have to light the movie in the same fashion. It really seemed at all times like a live action cartoon, which was really exciting.”
The Munsters will be released this fall by Universal 1440 Entertainment, a production arm of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.
Exclusively watch the teaser trailer for the new Munsters above.