Horror Director Breaks Studio Rules After Terrifier Success
The Hostel filmmaker reveals how the unrated slasher franchise convinced him to abandon traditional studio constraints and launch his own horror production company.
Horror filmmaker Eli Roth has launched his own production company after watching the Terrifier franchise prove that extreme violence can succeed without studio backing. The director behind Hostel and Thanksgiving says the slasher series showed him that unrated movies have gone mainstream.
Roth founded The Horror Section this year, a fan-supported studio designed to produce the kind of extreme content that major studios typically reject. His first project will be Ice Cream Man, a script he's carried around for two decades but never had the freedom to make properly.
Breaking Free from Corporate Constraints
Speaking about his decision to go independent, Roth explained how studio interference has limited his vision throughout his career. Even with Thanksgiving, Sony executives forced him to remove violent scenes after viewing daily footage.
"I think that you just got to do your own thing. And sometimes you're ahead of the wave, sometimes you're right on the wave, sometimes you're behind it. You can't control it. I've had Ice Cream Man in my head for 20 years. We had a script written in 2003, 2004, right after Cabin Fever. It was never there yet. And then I rewrote it," Roth said.
"But then when I formed the company, I think what Terrifier did was it showed that unrated movies are mainstream. I was like, 'Okay, we're done.' The violence that I fought for that I had to take out of Thanksgiving, then Terrifier 3 comes out, and I'm just like…"
Sony's Fear of Consumer Backlash
Roth's experience with studio censorship goes back to his breakthrough film Hostel in 2005. Sony executives were so disturbed by the footage that they refused to distribute it, fearing customers would boycott their electronics products.
"But you have to do it independently because it's the Sony Corporation, and they have their own set of rules. And even they shut down Thanksgiving at one point because they saw dailies and they're like, 'We're not going to start this again unless you reshoot that.' And I was like, 'I still got it,'" the director recalled.
The situation with Hostel was even more dramatic. "They saw something, and they were like, 'This is so awful,' which is what happened on Hostel, where they saw the dailies and they went, 'This is so awful. People will stop buying Sony Electronics if they see this. We cannot put this out.' And that's why they went to Lionsgate. And then they, of course, loved it when it was a huge hit."
Independent Horror's New Wave
The success of the Terrifier films has created a blueprint for independent horror that Roth plans to follow. Art the Clown's brutal antics have proven that audiences will embrace uncompromising violence when it's delivered authentically.
Roth's new approach means complete creative control over Ice Cream Man and future projects. No corporate oversight. No sanitized violence. No compromise on his original vision that studios have repeatedly rejected or watered down over the years.