Yesterday Blumhouse and writer-director Christopher Landon's PG-13 slasher sequel HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U hit theaters. I'm seeing it this weekend and I'm sure most of you plan to as well. But here's an interesting bit of trivia for you: The killer almost donned a different mask in the original film. And it was… a pig mask? Yep, Landon recently spoke about the new movie and went back to the original, spilling the beans that originally he thought of having the Baby-Face Killer sport a Pig Mask as the film's lead heroine "was a bit of a selfish pig." Interesting…
Here's what Landon said specifically about the Pig Mask:
When I was in early, early pre-production [on Happy Death Day], I was trying to figure out what would be that sort of iconic mask. I feel like all great slasher films have that very memorable mask and at the time my partner and I we were pregnant with our first child. I think I had baby on the brain. So, I went to our mask designer, Tony Gardner, and I pitched him the baby. I pitched him actually two things. I pitched him a baby and I pitched him a pig. I thought that Tree’s character, she was a bit of a selfish pig, so I thought that could be funny. But when I received the prototype for the baby, I knew that was it. It kind of struck the perfect balance of it being creepy, weird, slightly funny, but ultimately scary. And so it seemed to fit the tone of our movie better than anything else.
Personally, I'm glad that Landon went with the Baby-Face mask. It's pretty damn iconic by this point in time and we've already seen a bevy of Pig Masked killers on the slasher screen including MADISON COUNTY and the SAW series to name a mere few. What do you think of the Baby-Face mask and would you have rather seen yet another Pig Mask in its place? Let us know below!
Here's the rundown on the two tales of time-warping terror:
In Happy Death Day, Teresa "Tree" Gelbman's birthday is the worst day of her life, starting when she wakes up in a stranger's bed. It's also the last day of her life, ending when she's killed by a psychotic killer with a knife. She's dead. And then she wakes up in a stranger's bed, it's September 18, and she has to live it all over again . . . until she's hunted down and wakes up, again, and again. It's a Groundhog Day situation, only with murder, guns, and mean girls, and Tree's only shot at living to see the next day is to relive the day of her murder, over and over, until she discovers her killer's identity.
Happy Death Day 2U picks up the story without missing a beat. Tree Gelbman thought she'd finally lived to see a brand-new day. But when she wakes up on her same birthday and an all-new psychopath in a mask is out to kill her and her friends, she's going to find out that all the rules have changed. Death makes a killer comeback.
Jason Blum once again produces and Christopher Landon returns to write and direct this next chapter, while executive producers Angela Mancuso and John Baldecchi are newly joined by EP Samson Mucke. HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U is now playing at a theater near you.