{"id":135507,"date":"2025-11-15T00:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T00:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135507\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T00:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T00:24:09","slug":"spider-man-director-jon-watts-looks-back-on-web-of-lies-behind-clown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135507\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man Director Jon Watts Looks Back on Web of Lies Behind Clown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSometimes, actors and filmmakers have to stretch the truth to get their big break. For example, if young actors are asked whether they can ice skate or ride a horse, the answer is always yes. In the case of MCU Spider-Man director Jon Watts<\/a>, it was concocting a fake trailer<\/a>, circa 2010, for a child-eating clown<\/a> movie called Clown, as if it belonged to horror connoisseur Eli Roth.<\/p>\n

\n\tLuckily, when Roth caught wind<\/a> of the gambit that Watts and his co-writer, Christopher D. Ford, conceived, he was feeling generous, not litigious. After all, he was only a few years removed from making Thanksgiving<\/a>, one of the five faux-trailers to be featured in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez\u2019s Grindhouse. Roth then asked Watts and Ford if they had a feature-length script for Clown, and while they most definitely did not, the two best friends agreed that one more falsehood couldn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe lied. We said, \u2018We definitely have the script all worked out and ready to go.\u2019 So while we scrambled to get that together, Eli took the trailer to AFM and pre-sold all the foreign rights,\u201d Watts tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Clown\u2019s newly remastered 4K Blu-ray release via Turbine.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts and Ford quickly turned their viral fictitious trailer into a proper script, one that\u2019s centered on a mildly successful realtor and family man named Kent McCoy (Andy Powers). Due to a new listing, Kent is running slightly late for his son Jack\u2019s (Christian Distefano) 7th birthday party. And upon receiving a call that his rent-a-clown was double booked, he chooses to rummage through the leftover possessions of the deceased homeowner whose property he\u2019s trying to sell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s when he discovers an old-timey clown costume he can wear to the party. Kent may have saved his son\u2019s birthday, but he quickly realizes that the clown suit won\u2019t come off no matter what he does. He then makes the chilling discovery by way of Peter Stormare\u2019s costumer character that the clown garb stems from the skin and hair of a Nordic demon called the Cl\u00f6yne. If Kent wants to successfully stop his ever-increasing transformation into the Cl\u00f6yne and rid the possession, he has to consume five children to satisfy the demon\u2019s appetite.<\/p>\n

\n\tShortly before filming was scheduled to begin, Roth also facilitated a distribution deal with the Weinstein brothers\u2019 genre banner, Dimension Films. Fortunately, Watts didn\u2019t have to contend with any of the company\u2019s patented interference during post-production, but he did receive an oddly specific note from one of the brothers during pre-production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe son character, Jack, his name was going to be Jake, but then Bob Weinstein asked us to change it because his son\u2019s name was Jake,\u201d Watts recalls. \u201cHe didn\u2019t like the idea of a little Jake being in jeopardy. So we always wanted the kid to be named Jake after [future Thunderbolts* director] Jake Schreier, but we had to change it at the last minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts may not have had his edit hijacked, but he was by no means out of the woods in terms of Clown\u2019s release. In 2014, Dimension opted to bury the film domestically, and it wasn\u2019t until Clown grossed $4.3 million internationally (against a $1.5 million budget) that they decided to give it a nominal U.S. release in the summer of 2016. Clown would go on to gross a meager $55K domestically after spending just two weeks in 100 theaters or less.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts can only speculate as to why the film didn\u2019t get the robust theatrical push it was promised. One possible explanation is that Harvey Weinstein went on TV in early 2014 to say that he\u2019d prioritize less violent<\/a> movies going forward, so perhaps Clown became a casualty of that pivot. Watts also remembers an advance screening that likely sealed the film\u2019s fate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think Bob [Weinstein] saw it for the very first time when we did a preview screening, and he was just absolutely horrified,\u201d Watts shares. \u201cHe didn\u2019t talk to any of us, and he just walked out of the theater at the end. That\u2019s how that ended.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn retrospect, Watts still can\u2019t help but wonder what Clown would\u2019ve done had it been given a genuine theatrical push. Maybe it could\u2019ve reaped the benefits that Andy Muschietti\u2019s It movies and the Terrifier sequels would enjoy in the years that followed. Watts and Ford even game-planned an entire Clown universe in the event of its success.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI always wonder what would\u2019ve happened. We always planned it as a seven-part epic. So as soon as the world is ready, we\u2019ve got them all lined up,\u201d Watts says. \u201cWe want to go back into the past and into space. I want to do one that\u2019s like The Northman. Anyone can put that suit on, and that opens the door to a lot of possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a recent conversation with THR, Watts also explains how the Clown playbook helped him land Spider-Man: Homecoming<\/a>, the first chapter in his Tom Holland<\/a>-led Spider-Man trilogy.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2010, you and your NYU film school gang made a fake trailer<\/a> for a Cronenberg riff called Clown, only you labeled it as an Eli Roth movie. Did you choose Eli because he appreciates the concept of the faux-trailer<\/a> as much as anyone?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was part of it. It was also the idea that if you put Eli\u2019s name on it, you know it\u2019s going to go to a really dark and disturbing place. That allowed people\u2019s imaginations to fill in the blanks between what we actually put in the trailer. It\u2019s funny that you describe it as Cronenbergian because that was the other idea. We were either going to say Eli Roth or David Cronenberg, and I think we made the right choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEli liked it enough to not call his lawyer. He was the one who then got the ball rolling on Dimension\u2019s involvement?<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually. The first step was him saying, \u201cDo you guys have a feature?\u201d And we lied. We said, \u201cYeah, absolutely. We definitely have the script all worked out and ready to go.\u201d So while we scrambled to get that together, Eli took the trailer to AFM [American Film Market] and pre-sold all the foreign rights. Dimension then got involved after we had written the script and were getting into production [during the winter of 2012].<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJon Watts and Andy Powers\u2019 Kent McCoy\/the Cl\u00f6yne on the 2012 set of Clown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Katrina Wan PR<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you have the same eventful postproduction experience that so many others have had?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, we didn\u2019t have any of that at all. Now knowing what was actually going on behind the scenes over at Dimension and the Weinstein Company in those years, it\u2019s interesting to think back on it all. I think Bob [Weinstein] saw it for the very first time when we did a preview screening, and he was just absolutely horrified. He didn\u2019t talk to any of us, and he just walked out of the theater at the end. That\u2019s how that ended.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs far as the edit, do you credit the especially low budget for Clown not being at the top of their minds?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor not being top of mind, I honestly credit the fact that they were probably busy trying to cover up a bunch of terrible things. At the time, I had no idea what was going on; no one did. It was right around the same time that Harvey Weinstein had come out against violence in films. Remember that<\/a>? He said that he no longer wanted to be associated with films that were excessively violent, and here we were just putting the finishing touches on our movie about a child-eating clown. So the timing couldn\u2019t have been worse for any of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tHas this week\u2019s remastered 4K release had to jump through a lot of hoops given how tangled the new ownership web is?<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t really know all the specifics of the complex legal connections. So much of it was pre-sold, and because this is a German 4K release, it\u2019s through FilmNation. They owned it. Dimension only had U.S. rights. The film came out internationally [in 2014 and 2015], but it was never theatrically released in the U.S. In Italy, it was the number-two American film the weekend that it came out in 2014. It was right after Interstellar [during the Nov. 13 to Nov. 16 weekend]. I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDidn\u2019t it get a limited two-week run in the U.S.?<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually [in June 2016]. It was only after it played well internationally, and I think they felt like they had to do something with it. It never had a [proper] theatrical release, though. It was really only released through whatever straight-to-video or streaming thing existed back then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tChristian Distefano as Jack McCoy, not Jake, in Jon Watts\u2019 feature directorial debut, Clown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurbine<\/p>\n

\n\tI talked to Jake Schreier<\/a> about your film school gang earlier this year. Your co-writer, Christopher Ford, was certainly a key part of Clown, but how involved was the wider Waverly crew in the actual production?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe were always a very collaborative group when it came to writing scripts. Everyone would read each script and give notes. I know that writer-director Ben Dickinson wrote and sang the song, \u201cFrowny the Clown,\u201d which plays over the end credits. But everyone is involved somehow. Duncan [Skiles] definitely did something; it may have been a voice. Ford is hiding in the background of a few shots if anyone out there wants to try and find him.<\/p>\n

\n\tJake is in there somewhere too. The son character, Jack, his name was going to be Jake, but then Bob Weinstein asked us to change it because his son\u2019s name was Jake. He didn\u2019t like the idea of a little Jake being in jeopardy. So we always wanted the kid to be named Jake after Jake Schreier, but we had to change it at the last minute.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAndy Powers as the Cl\u00f6yne in Jon Watts\u2019 2014 feature directorial debut, Clown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurbine<\/p>\n

\n\tKent McCoy\u2019s gradual transformation into the final clown form was really well designed and executed. Was it quite a process to chart and track while shooting out of sequence?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, we had the most amazing spreadsheet. We had mapped it all out. It was a continuity masterclass. We had broken it down to six or seven various phases, and we just tested it out in pre-production to make sure it felt like it was tracking. The idea was to have the evolution happen over the course of the film without you necessarily being aware of it. Every time you come back to him, he looks a little bit worse and a little bit worse until he emerges as this completely unrecognizable monster. We actually had more stages for after the ending of the film. That\u2019s not the final form at the end. You only see the final form in the illustrations that Peter Stormare has, but we wanted to not quite get there so that he was still an unformed, unfinished demon. (Laughs.) I haven\u2019t gotten to talk about Clown in such a long time. This is such a treat for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat long fixed shot of Kent in the bathtub is such a striking composition. He\u2019s at the bottom of the frame with all this green blood on the tile behind him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThank you. It\u2019s really nice when someone comes up to me and tells me that they liked Clown or something from Clown. It was such a bad experience when it got shelved in the U.S. and all that. But making it was so fun. The trailer was amazing. All of that felt like a dream come true, and then it just all fell apart. So now being able to look back on it and laugh \u2014\u00a0and to see this incredible remastered version \u2014\u00a0I guess that\u2019s what it feels like to become a cult classic. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a cult classic yet, but we\u2019ll see.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAndy Powers as the Cl\u00f6yne in Jon Watts\u2019 2014 feature directorial debut, Clown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTurbine<\/p>\n

\n\tGenre films have always been a stepping stone for filmmakers, but when you were making Clown, did you have ambitions of being a blockbuster filmmaker?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, it was genuinely a surprise. I wasn\u2019t thinking, \u201cOh, this trailer will lead to a horror film, which will lead to the next thing.\u201d There was a moment where I was like, \u201cDo I actually want my first movie to be about a child-eating clown? Is that going to be my Citizen Kane?\u201d But filmmakers that I really admire had made genre movies like Dementia 13 [Francis Ford Coppola] and Piranha II [James Cameron]. There\u2019s so many examples. So to get the opportunity to make anything, I was like, \u201cI\u2019ve got to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKnowing how effective Clown\u2019s fake trailer was, you decided to run that same play again en route to Spider-Man: Homecoming?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I\u2019ve always liked trailers. They\u2019re their own little art form. So I felt it was helpful to communicate the tone of what I wanted to do in the Spider-Man world, and that was the best way to do it. You can talk about it till you\u2019re blue in the face, but it\u2019s much easier to just cut together a little trailer to really show people what that juxtaposition was going to look like. You take high school scenes, and you put them next to superhero scenes. So that really helped visualize the tone that I was going for, and it seemed to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJon Watts on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Chuck Zlotnick\/Sony Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the best scenes in the MCU, if not the best scene, is the Jaguar ride to the homecoming dance. Michael Keaton\u2019s Adrien Toomes figures out Peter Parker\u2019s (Tom Holland) alter ego on the way there, and he threatens him, which makes a lot more sense having revisited all your work. You really have a knack for adults scaring kids. Where does this through-line come from?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) I have really nice parents, and I had a really great upbringing, so I\u2019m not quite sure. We always called that the Hitchcock sequence. We built the whole movie around that, and it was part of my early pitch. I was like, \u201cCould we make a drive to the dance be more tense than any other scene in the film?\u201d So that was really fun to plan and pull off. Whenever I get to dip into thriller or suspense genre elements, I always really enjoy myself.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou probably have some clue as to what\u2019s transpiring in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but are you looking forward to being an audience member again?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I can\u2019t wait. It\u2019s going to be so strange for me. I\u2019m still in touch with everyone. Hopefully, Tom is okay. He got hurt a couple weeks ago, but I think he\u2019s going to be fine. So that\u2019s going to be such a surreal experience for me. I\u2019m nervous, I\u2019m excited and I can\u2019t wait to see what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\n\tI wish I could\u2019ve watched Spider-Man: No Way Home<\/a> without knowing anything. It was still exciting in the moment, but I wanted to be blindsided, something a series of viral leaks precluded. While you suffered more than most, is there any way to stop leaks on these types of movies?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, I feel like a lot of people didn\u2019t know that that was going to happen.<\/p>\n

\n\tLucky them.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. People that are really invested try to get every tiny piece of information they can, which is part of the fun for some people. Some people don\u2019t want the surprise. But if I ever sit on something like that ever again, you\u2019d have to get to such an extreme level of secrecy to try and protect it, and I don\u2019t even know if it would be possible. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo, if I had a secret that big again, I feel like I could keep it a secret. But then again, one of the things that leaked was a [DoorDash] delivery<\/a> to Andrew Garfield\u2019s house in Atlanta. How can you anticipate that? You\u2019d have to force your cast and crew to be on total lockdown. So I don\u2019t know that you could ever be so airtight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was cool was when we did our first focus tests. No one knew what was going on at all. It was early on in the process before people started to make connections. We got such a pure, genuine, shocked reaction from the crowd. It was amazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI just don\u2019t understand the mindset of someone who decides to use their privileged position of working on a Spider-Man movie to capture images or video with their cell phone, all so they can hand those materials off to someone else to disseminate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s always someone looking to spoil it and get some clout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you and Ford originated Skeleton Crew<\/a>, did one of you say, \u201cWhat if Cop Car<\/a> had a starship instead?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpace Cop Car! That was the pitch. That\u2019s all we had to say.<\/p>\n

\n\tI read a decade-old interview with you, and like the two kids in Cop Car, you mentioned that you and your childhood friends in Colorado would just go walking in hopes of finding either an alien spaceship or pirate treasure. So Skeleton Crew was clearly in your mind for a while.<\/p>\n

\n\tWim<\/a> and Neel walking and falling down that ditch and then eventually finding the spaceship, the feeling of it is directly from my childhood. It\u2019s like that ditch is from behind my house. It\u2019s everything that I ever wanted to happen to me. I actually got to make that dream come true.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou had a big win this year with Final Destination Bloodlines. You conceived the story and hired the directors<\/a>. What lesson are you going to apply to your next producorial jobs?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was fun. I had been given such a big sandbox to play in at Marvel. Kevin [Feige] is a great producer. He is very involved, and he cares a lot. So one thing I took from him and tried to apply to Bloodlines is to just let the directors direct once the shoot starts. Let them do what they\u2019re going to do and try not to micromanage that part of it. Then just see what they deliver in post. You can always get back into it. You can tweak it, you can do pickups, and you can try to make it as good as it can possibly be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, because Marvel was so hands off with me when we were shooting, I tried to apply the same thing to Bloodlines. I think it allowed Zach [Lipovsky] and Adam [Stein] a kind of freedom to really push the story to a really interesting place, and it paid off. People really responded, which felt good.<\/p>\n

\n\tLastly, I\u2019ve just illustrated how well things worked out for you, but seeing what the new It stories and Terrifier movies have done for clown horror, does part of you wish you could have doubled down on the Cl\u00f6yne at some point?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe have the story ready to go. I always wonder what would\u2019ve happened. Even if people didn\u2019t like the movie, I do feel like a lot of people would\u2019ve gone to see it if we had released Clown in America with a big marketing push. I\u2019ll never really know, but we always planned it as a seven-part epic. So as soon as the world is ready, we\u2019ve got them all lined up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy that specific number?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was just the right number to tell the story that we wanted to tell. (Laughs.) Isn\u2019t that how many Leprechaun movies there are? It\u2019s seven or eight. But there\u2019s a big scope. We want to go back into the past and into space. There\u2019s a lot of potential within the clown universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI figured the number would be five since five kids have to be eaten to shed the demon.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat gets into the origin story. I want to do one that\u2019s like The Northman. We\u2019ve always had an idea of how to make a whole bunch of these movies. It was built into the premise. Anyone can put that suit on, and that opens the door to a lot of possibilities. Clowns, Clown\u00b3, Clown: Resurrection. It\u2019s there. It\u2019s all there.<\/p>\n

\n\t***
A remastered 4K Blu-ray of Clown with three cover variants is now available from German distributor, Turbine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, actors and filmmakers have to stretch the truth to get their big break. For example, if young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[76434,92717,156,90696,409,111,139,69,92718,92719,68053,92720],"class_list":{"0":"post-135507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-clown","9":"tag-cop-car","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jon-watts","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-skeleton-crew","17":"tag-spider-man-homecoming","18":"tag-spider-man-no-way-home","19":"tag-star-wars-skeleton-crew"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}