As earlier reported, the new CEO of Hammer Films, Simon Oakes, has been making the publicity rounds. Oakes recently sat down with horror blog Bloody Disgusting to discuss the future of the classic film production company. Hammer will soon be releasing The Resident starring Hilary Swank with a cameo appearance by Sir Christopher Lee, which will tell the story of a doctor whose landlord becomes obsessed with her. The company will also be releasing Let Me In, a remake of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In amid some controversy from fans of the original.
The reanimation of Hammer is big news for fans of classic horror, having released The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Curse of the Werewolf and a myriad of other titles that have withstood the tests of time.
Here are some highlights from the interview. The full Q&A can be read here.
On remaking old Hammer movies:
“… we would never remake. We might re-imagine. You know, one of the first questions I was asked when we bought the company was, ‘Are you gonna remake all of those old Hammer films?’ And I said, ‘well, why would you do that?’ Because in a sense they almost were of their time. They sort of almost became old-fashioned as they came up to the end of that period of time when they were making those pictures.”
On Hammer’s control of its library:
“What we do is we control everything in the sense that we also have blocking rights. So in some cases we control titles entirely, and in some cases other people have distribution rights of which we’re a beneficiary, but we don’t distribute ourselves. In some cases, we have co-ownership of rights with studios. Because the company is so old, you can imagine, [if] you made a picture in the ‘50s, and that company that made the picture got sold to that company, and to that company, and to that company. And suddenly you find you end up with a picture with Warner Bros., Canal and Fox.”
On what Hammer plans to bring to contemporary horror:
“What I do know is what we’ll do, and what we’re trying to do. And what we’re trying to do is, as I say, reboot, recreate, kick-start this studio again…We can really start from the ground upwards. The genres are broad, you know. In a sense, it’s almost like I know what I won’t do as opposed to what I will do. We will do a lot of stuff, alright. And the genres within genres…there are six to eight different broad tropes that we’d say, ‘well, that would be ok for us.’ The only thing that on my watch we won’t do, is we won’t make slasher pictures.”
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