{"id":29832,"date":"2025-07-29T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/29832\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T00:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:01:09","slug":"screaming-and-conjuring-exclusive-excerpt-explores-james-gunns-slither-and-the-sequel-that-never-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/29832\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Screaming and Conjuring’ Exclusive Excerpt Explores James Gunn’s ‘Slither’ and the Sequel That Never Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long before Superman or even Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn was firmly established as a \u201chorror guy,\u201d from his early days writing\u00a0Tromeo and Juliet for Troma to his feature directorial debut with the horror-comedy Slither. It was Slither that introduced Gunn\u2019s voice as a director worth watching, and Gunn reflects on the monster movie almost twenty years later in an interview conducted for Clark Collis\u2019 upcoming book, Screaming and Conjuring.<\/p>\n

1984 Publishing will release\u00a0Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie, a definitive 504-page hardcover that pulls back the curtain on the horror film industry, on\u00a0September 2, 2025. With the book now available for pre-order<\/a>, 1984 Publishing has shared an exclusive excerpt with us this week.<\/p>\n

As you might have guessed, it\u2019s all about James Gunn\u2019s Slither. Read on to learn more about Slither\u2018s gooey practical effects and the sequel that never ended up getting off the ground.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

While James Gunn had helped kick off the horror remake craze with his screenplay for Zack Snyder\u2019s Dawn of the Dead, the writer nightmared up an original tale for his next genre project. At the start of 2005, Variety announced that Gunn was making his directorial debut with the film Slither, which would be shot in Vancouver and distributed domestically by Universal. The article described the movie as \u201ctaking place in a South Carolina town where an inhabitant becomes infected by an alien parasite. It spreads to other townsfolk while its original host turns into a loathsome-looking baddie. Pic will rely heavily on prosthetic effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunn planned Slither as a throwback to the special effects extravaganzas he had enjoyed growing up. \u201cMy inspirations were the in-your-face, fun, over-the-top, gory horror films of the 1980s,\u201d he recalled for Film Threat ahead of the movie\u2019s release. \u201cRe-Animator, The Fly, The Thing, Return of the Living Dead, Basket Case, Evil Dead II. With the exception of a couple of terrific filmmakers like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, horror has become so boring and by-the-numbers as of late. We needed some fucked-up color in the marketplace: thus, Slither.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s prosthetics were the responsibility of Ernest Dickerson\u2019s Demon Knight collaborator Todd Masters. The special effects makeup artist was happy to learn that Gunn wanted the movie\u2019s effects to be practical whenever possible. \u201cWe were really fortunate to have a supporter like James for practical effects,\u201d he says. \u201cEven if it\u2019s well-made CG, it can just become a big graphics show. You can tell there\u2019s no soul behind it. We were hoping on Slither that people wouldn\u2019t forget how cool this shit is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunn cast Nathan Fillion as the town\u2019s police chief, Elizabeth Banks as a teacher, and Michael Rooker as her husband, Grant Grant, who horribly mutates after coming across the alien creature. The horror-comedy\u2019s real star would prove to be its array of deliriously grotesque effects. In the finished movie, Grant Grant grows tentacles and impregnates an old flame named Brenda (played by actress Brenda James) with alien spawn, causing her to swell until she is a massive sphere. The \u2018Brenda\u2019 prosthetic was built at Masters\u2019 Los Angeles workshop and then transported via truck to the shoot in Vancouver. \u201cIt was quite crazy,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of my people in my office got highway information on the height of the overpasses all the way up Interstate 5, and we got the lowest truck we could find, and that\u2019s what determined how big Brenda was. It is, like, 12 feet wide and 13 feet tall. I actually think it is the world\u2019s largest prosthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masters and his team used a petroleum-based material employed in the manufacture of sex toys to make the large number of prosthetics that Gunn required. \u201cThis was the material that they were [using to] make fleshlights,\u201d says Masters. \u201cThis material was just amazingly flexible, and still held detail, and felt really good\u2014not that I ever tried it like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Masters\u2019 heavy use of the material was appropriate. Several of the prosthetics seen in the film resembled human erogenous zones, from the breastlike Brenda-monster to the orifice belonging to the first alien creature seen in the movie. \u201cThe funny thing about James is, even when things get tense, it\u2019s fucking hilarious,\u201d says Masters. \u201cWe\u2019re shooting this yellow organism, and James screams across, \u2018Why does everything you fucking do look like a sexual part?!\u2019 He\u2019s calling me out on the yellow organism, which literally has a vagina sculpted on top of it. And I go, \u2018Okay, here\u2019s your script, it actually says in the script, \u2018The yellow organism has a yellow vagina on it.\u2019 This isn\u2019t a coincidence!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Universal released Slither on March 31, 2006. The film placed a lowly eighth on the box office chart over its first weekend in theaters, earning less than $4 million and slipping out of the top ten the following week. Gunn\u2019s movie went on to gross $7.8 million at the domestic box, a disappointment given its reported $15 million budget. The director would come to believe that he had overestimated the appeal of films mixing horror and humor. \u201cYeah, if somebody had shown me a breakdown of what horror-comedies had done in the past before I made Slither, I probably would have thought twice about it,\u201d he says. \u201cHorror-comedies as a rule have not made big money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunn had teased a sequel to Slither in the movie\u2019s post-credits sequence. But the film\u2019s box office performance made that second film a nonstarter. \u201cI brought up Slither 2 to one of the producers not too long after,\u201d says Masters. \u201cHe basically threw me out of his office.\u201d Still, the makeup artist has kept the outsized Brenda prosthetic safe, just in case anyone does decide to make Slither 2. \u201cAt the end of [shooting] Slither, the production manager goes, \u2018What do you want to do with this thing?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I can\u2019t really throw her away, I mean, she\u2019s kind of a historical piece.\u2019 Yeah, Brenda is in a warehouse below a shopping center in Tacoma, just waiting for the sequel.\u201d<\/p>\n

To James Gunn\u2019s delight, Fangoria helped publicize Slither by featuring an image of Michael Rooker in full monster makeup on the cover of its April 2006 issue. \u201cI don\u2019t really collect articles or covers,\u201d says Gunn. \u201cBut I do have my Fangoria cover up in my office. Fangoria was a huge magazine to me growing up.\u201d In August, Fangoria announced that Slither had been nominated for three of its Chainsaw Awards, whose winners would be announced at a ceremony in October. The event was the first Chainsaw Awards to be televised, a sign of the horror genre\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n

Starting with 1996\u2019s horror gamechanger\u00a0Scream, Clark Collis\u00a0\u201ctraces the blood-spattered path of horror\u2019s evolution through exclusive behind-the-scenes accounts, untold stories, and in-depth interviews with key figures who shaped the era. For the first time, the full story of horror\u2019s modern renaissance is revealed in one essential volume.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screaming and Conjuring\u00a0will offer a deep dive into films like\u00a0The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, Final Destination, The Others, Pan\u2019s Labyrinth, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Saw, Hostel, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and\u00a0The Conjuring\u00a0and their production history.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor decades, horror was regarded as the film industry\u2019s dirty secret, and now it\u2019s one of the genres which is keeping Hollywood alive and cinemas open,\u201d says author Clark Collis. \u201cScreaming and Conjuring shows how a group of filmmakers turned horror into a box office juggernaut by creating some of the scariest movies ever unleashed onto the big screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screaming and Conjuring will publish in a limited first-edition deluxe hardcover, featuring black foil-gilded page edges, textured cover spot varnish, and heavyweight paper stock.<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long before Superman or even Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn was firmly established as a \u201chorror guy,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,1155,2839,18404,18405,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-29832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-james-gunn","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-screaming-and-conjuring","12":"tag-slither","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}