“Studio 666” may star the dude that wrote “My Hero,” but by no means are Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters screwing around with their movie. The horror comedy film has a gory and violent opening and even segues into theme music by none other than slasher legend John Carpenter.
And to really prove they were serious, the band recruited special effects wizard Tony Gardner, who has worked on the Chucky films, “Army of Darkness,” “Darkman,” “Hocus Pocus” and many more, and was even in Michael Jackson’s original “Thriller” video.
Grohl says it was Gardner who hatched the idea for many of “Studio 666’s” bloodiest effects, including how to kill off each member of the Foo Fighters.
“He is the sweetest, kindest, most gentle, down to Earth, almost bookwormish kind of guy. But oh my god, what goes on in this dude’s head,” Grohl told TheWrap. “We needed to figure out creative and inventive ways to f—ing murder everybody, so we basically just walked around the property. Oh, you know what would be really cool or what you should do? You should crucify Taylor [Hawkins]! Or decapitate Taylor! We could chop Rami [Jaffee] in half as he’s having sex with Whitney Cummings!”
That last one really happens in what is easily “Studio 666’s” most bizarre horror set piece. While the band didn’t exactly draw straws to figure out who would get the axe first, Grohl says there is a legit “murder list” somewhere that spells out all the mayhem.
“There is a piece of paper with the murder list, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and it was just walking around the property cracking up thinking of the most ridiculous ways to kill everybody. It was really funny,” Grohl said.
The film is the story of how the Foo Fighters move into a house in Encino — the same one where in real life they recorded their 10th album “Medicine at Midnight” — and try to complete an epic song that a legend tells will unleash a demon into the world. And after Grohl finds himself with writer’s block for their next big album, he winds up possessed by an evil spirit and slowly killing off his bandmates that threaten to derail him from completing the evil jam.
Grohl said that the Foo Fighters didn’t go into “Studio 666” with any real ambition to make a horror movie, but the project fell in their lap and ballooned into something real as soon as writers, special effects artists and other actors, including Jeff Garlin, Whitney Cummings, Will Forte and Jenna Ortega, all became involved.
“It’s fun I think to see your favorite group or a group of musicians that you’re used to in this one particular setting or medium jump over to this other thing, because we’ve never done it before, so I imagine our audience would love to see us in this whole other medium. And then at the end of the day, it’s just fun. We’ve been a band for 26 f—ing years, we’ve accomplished a lot, and then you think, ‘Alright, what’s next?’ And something falls into your lap and then you say, ‘Why not?’ We talk about it all the time.”
“Studio 666” opens in theaters on Friday. Check out a clip from TheWrap’s interview with Dave Grohl above, and see more from the interview here.
