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Since April, media coverage of the Paramount Pictures horror hitA Quiet Placehas generally coalesced into two distinct groupings.
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The movie was risky on every level, says Form.
You start reading [the script] and go, Oh, theres no dialogue.
The idea was so original.
And were all in on him!
You have to trust us.
Were not going to let you down.
Theyd just be like, What are you guys talking about?
A movie with no dialogue?
I dont see how thats a movie.
That doesnt sound very commercial.
You should just move past it.
Almost immediately, the project was bought by Platinum Dunes better known as tentpole-movie director Michael Bays production company.
We drew pictures into the script.
We would literally Photoshop pictures of a Monopoly board for the Monopoly scene in there.
Drew and I have killed more kids in basements than anyone youll ever meet, says Fuller.
Thats what we did for years and years.
Theres nothing the matter with it.
But it did get kind of boring.
Wed be in Starbucks talking about the right way to dismember someone.
And people are looking at us like were serial killers.
By that point, we had made 12 or 13 of those types of movies.
We wanted to do something else.
Hisinitial reaction: Oh man, I dont do horror movies, so Im probably not your guy.
Ten days later, he called the producers.
Ive got great news for you guys!
Im gonna play the dad, Fuller recalls Krasinski saying.
We gotta set the movie up.
He goes, Oh, theres more.
Im gonna rewrite the script and Im gonna direct it!
Fuller and Form left the conversation convinced they had found their filmmaker.
Based on that meeting, Paramount gave the production the go-ahead.
John was not the obvious choice as director for the film, says Woods.
And we were fans of his earlier work.
Adds Beck: Were huge fans ofThe Office,so it was very flattering!
According to a source close to the production, certain studio executives didnt like the film.
The producers deny there was anything but a positive reaction from Paramount.
She just bends down in the cut, grabs her ear and theres nothing behind her and nothing happens.
You have this young girl and somethings bothering her but you have no idea what it is.
Krasinski only managed to finish the movies final visual effects 18 hours before its first public screening.
The stakes were high.
Halfway through the premiere, Fullers anxiety got the better of him.
You dont know how into it the audience is until the third act.
They start cheering and all of that, he says.
Midway through, I couldnt tell.
I was so stressed out, thank God they had that bar right there in that theater.
I went to the bar and did two shots of vodka.
I couldnt sit there anymore.
I just could not bear it.
In light ofA Quiet Places success, asequelwas quickly (perhaps inevitably) commissioned.
And we already started on that road to giant success withA Quiet Place.
That announcement came as something of a shock to the producers.
Weve been at Paramount for eight or nine years.
There was certainly a time when they were not interested in making those kinds of movies, says Fuller.
We really were banging our heads against the wall.
With earlier administrations there, there was no hunger to do horror movies at all.
But we never thought that would actually happen.
I cant stress how humble the beginnings of this project were.
So to be sitting in the afterglow is a super surreal place to be.
