![]() Taking it as something of a challenge, though, appealed to the problem-solving aspect of filmmaking that Wadlow enjoys. But he’d never just been handed a what amounted to a prompt from a studio - almost like a film-school project - and set out to make it into a full movie. Wadlow has brought original stories to screen before, in addition to reworking script drafts from other writers, and shooting movies based on preexisting IP. Once you start talking about these things, the movie almost presents itself.” Related StoriesĢ5 of the Best Coming-of-Age Horror Movies It puts you in sort of an antagonistic dynamic with your closest friends. It gives you permission to do things you wouldn’t normally do and say things you wouldn’t normally say. “Why does the game work? Why do people love the game? We started to really bear down on things like, the game is so popular because it exposes your secrets. “What we did was we just sat around and talked about the game,” explains Wadlow. With his writers room assembled, Wadlow and his team then broke the story open by drilling into why the game of Truth or Dare has had enough appeal to sustain itself as a time-honored party tradition (besides just giving people an excuse to make out). Certainly as writer-director, I kind of had final say, but it was a good way to field test things and see what was working, what wasn’t, and pull it together in a very quick fashion.” There was more than one story at play, and we each pitched different ideas. “The truth is, we approached it as fans of filmmaking, and thought about all the different stories that we were telling. “There is this misconception that when there’s more than one writer, the thing is sort of cobbled together,” says Wadlow, who co-wrote the script with Jillian Jacobs, Michael Reisz, and Christopher Roach. Drawing from what he learned watching Strain’s Carlton Cuse run a writers room, the filmmaker assembled a group of scribes to hammer out the story, instead of just going it alone. So you’ve got a movie and a title! Now what? Over the past few years, Wadlow had been working in TV as a producer and occasional writer for Bates Motel and The Strain. “I know how they have to put it all up on the screen, and so I think he thought I would be a good filmmaker to work with, given his model.” We had a great meeting, and he could tell that I was both a director and a producer, that I understood the logistics involved in filmmaking,” Wadlow says. With Blum working off his “high-concept, low-budget” philosophy (think big world-building in a tight package, like the Purge, Paranormal, or Insidious franchises), and Wadlow’s experience working at various budget levels (from small-scale horror like Cry Wolf to pseudo-superhero fare like Kick-Ass 2), the producer trusted that he could work within Blumhouse’s constraints. ![]() ![]() It helped, too, that Wadlow had a broad background of experience in filmmaking, having written, directed, produced, acted, and even notched a few credits as “miscellaneous crew” over the course of his career. Jason Blum Is Making Horror History by Showing Us Its Future I just came up with that on the spot and he was like, “That’s amazing! What happens next?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know! I’m just making this up!’” Related Stories “I met with Jason and he said, ‘Do you want to make a movie called Truth or Dare?’ And I said ‘Do you have a script? Do you have anything?’ He said, ‘Nope!’ And basically in the room, I pitched out the opening scene when Giselle (Aurora Perrineau) sets that woman on fire in the gas station. “The movie, if you really think about it, was a dare,” explains Wadlow. The director got the brief from Blum (as in, he was told the film’s title), and proceeded to spin up a cold open on the spot. Wadlow’s involvement with Truth or Dare started as so many things do in Hollywood: with a meeting. So we called up Truth or Dare writer and director Jeff Wadlow to find out how you make a movie based solely on a title. Until now, we had similarly scant information on just how, exactly, these three little words transformed into a glossy two-studio co-production. ![]() Blum liked the idea, too, and it entered into the production pipeline under the distribution deal the two studios have with one another, a pact that brought you Split, Get Out, and the forthcoming First Purge. Moses had no plot, no director, no star, no storyboards - just those three little words. As Vulture reported last year, the forthcoming body-count romp Truth or Dare was pitched to Blumhouse head Jason Blum by Universal’s co-president of worldwide marketing, Michael Moses, as nothing more than a title.
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