Earlier today we shared two new clips (see below) from Blumhouse and director Sophia Takal's BLACK CHRISTMAS remake. The flick hits a theater near you this Friday the 13th. And today co-writer April Wolfe reveals how the movie side-stepped an R-rating despite using a certain word…
April Wolfe says:
Actually, the thing that was a sticking point for Sophia was the fact that there are obviously some overt ideas about date rape in this movie. And there is an old text that has been going around the studios, and it has the language that you can't use in PG-13 movies. It has not been updated. People just use it as a guide, but one of the words that you can't use is rape. And so for us, we were like, we're going to get an R rating because she's saying the word rape. So, we put some f–ks in there.
She adds:
And it turns out that the MPAA was actually totally fine with us using the word rape, and then talking about date rape, too. But it's so meaningful to us that 13-year-olds can go and see this movie that is talking about date rape, because it's something that these kids are going to have to deal with pretty soon, unfortunately, in many cases. So, Sophia and I, we were psyched about the PG-13 rating. When the word got around, we all sent texts to each other, and it was just like, "Oh, this is really great. You know, more people get to see the movie and young girls, they get to see it, and they get to have these really complex and necessary discussions because of it.
Directed by Sophia Takal (ALWAYS SHINE) from a screenplay she wrote with April Wolfe, the film stars Imogen Poots, Aleyse Shannon, Lily Donoghue, Brittany O'Grady, Caleb Eberhardt, Simon Mead, and Cary Elwes. Jason Blum produced the remake with Ben Cosgrove and Adam Hendricks, and Couper Samuelson, Jeanette Volturno, Greg Gilreath, and Zac Locke serve as executive producers. It hits theaters THIS FRIDAY.