I spoke to director Andy Chen about his new spider-man Horror fan film ‘THE SPIDER’, starring walking dead star Chandler Riggs.
How excited are you for everyone to see THE SPIDER
I’m SOO excited for everyone to see it! This project has definitely gotten the most attention out of all my short films and there’s so much anticipation. I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks about it!
How long did it take to make THE SPIDER
It took about a year of thinking about it, a month of writing, and 2 two and a half days of filming. Editing took a few months as well.
Why did you want to make a horror film based on spider-man
Building off the popularity of my Shrek based horror short film, “Fiona” I wanted to do another twist off a pop culture character. Then I thought, why not take my favorite superhero and fuse it with one of my favorite body horror films, “The Fly”
Were their any Spider-man comics that you used as inspiration for this film
The inspiration was to keep the beginning accurate to the original Spider-man comics but then move towards man-spider and the patton parnel story with the rest of the film.
What was it like working with Chandler Riggs
Chandler was the best to work with. He loves Spider-man just as much as I do and getting the opportunity to collaborate with him on this has been a dream come true.
When casting the main role, Did you have anyone else in mind to play the main role other than Chandler Riggs?
We originally put out a casting call to find local talent really early on but when our producer, Artin, told me that Chandler could be an option, we crossed our fingers and put all our efforts into making it happen.
If THE SPIDER does well, would you consider doing a sequel
I probably wouldn’t do a sequel, but I would love to pitch a version of this as a feature film to Sony.
Most Spider-Man movies have huge budgets to show Peter’s abilities, what was the most difficult scene or effect to achieve with the smaller budget
The most difficult parts were after the transformation. The make up effects, suit and prosthetics took a lot of time and a lot of work. The wall climbing stuff also took a lot of planning but with my amazing team on my side, it wasn’t too hard to pull off.
Hollywood is filling up with Cinematic Universes with the latest addition of the Twisted Childhood Universe, do you see yourself bringing other Marvel characters into the horror scene?
I would love to see maybe some sort of X-men story but horror. Some of my favorite characters in that world are wolverine and nightcrawler.
What made you want to become a film director
I originally wanted to be a professional cinematographer but I started to direct my own short films just to practice and show off my cinematography skills. And after years and years of working and learning from other directors, I feel like I’ve grown the skill set myself to direct now and people seem to enjoy my work so I’m just going with the flow and seeing where it will take me.
THE SPIDER, starring Chandler Riggs is out on YouTube, on the Locustgarden channel
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