Earlier this morning, we shared an update on the Ginger Snaps TV series that John Fawcett, director of the 2000 werewolf classic Ginger Snaps (watch it HERE) is executive producing. That news came from an article in The Guardian in which Fawcett and the film’s star Katharine Isabelle looked back on their collaboration twenty-one years later – and during his interview, Fawcett revealed that one of the film’s lead roles was offered to future Hollywood powerhouse Scarlett Johansson.
Scripted by Karen Walton from a story she and Fawcett crafted together, Ginger Snaps centers on two teenage sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, and Johansson was offered the chance to play Brigitte. Fawcett said,
We were prepping for Ginger Snaps the same year as the Columbine shooting. There was a lot of focus in the media on how movies made kids violent, and the idea of a bloody film set in a high school didn’t go down too well with casting directors in Canada. Some of them joined forces to boycott our film, and the National Post ran an article on it. All the schools we asked turned us down but, luckily, another film production had a set of just three tiny school hallways that we could shoot on. We sent Scarlett Johansson a script to see if she was interested in Brigitte, but her mother had read the National Post article and didn’t want her daughter involved.”
At the time when the script was sent to her, Johansson’s only credits were the films North, Just Cause, Manny & Lo, If Lucy Fell, Fall, Home Alone 3, and The Horse Whisperer, as well as an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and a role in the pilot episode of The Client.
I’m sure Johansson would have been great as Brigitte, but things worked out just fine for her and Ginger Snaps. The Brigitte role went to Emily Perkins, and a big part of why Ginger Snaps is my favorite werewolf movie are the perfect performances Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins delivered as their characters.
If you haven’t watched Ginger Snaps yet, this is the perfect time to do so, because the movie is set around Halloween. The film follows
sisters Ginger and Brigette, who are self-imposed outcasts in their hometown. Inseparable and fascinated with the macabre, they make a pact to escape their sleepy suburban home by sixteen or else take their own lives. But on the night of her first period, Ginger is attacked and infected by a werewolf which unleashes a monstrous kind of puberty. Brigette can’t understand this new version of her sister who is violent and sexual. As a bloody trail begins to form in Ginger’s wake, Brigette must find a way to curb her sister’s new cravings or risk losing her forever.