It is official, preparations for Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights 2013 is underway. And what better way to kick off the excitement than the announcement of this year’s headlining maze at both the Hollywood and Orlando parks.
Evil Dead. The 2013 film Directed by Fede Alvarez and Produced by Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
There are three things that make a movie stand out as a great maze opportunity to Universal Hollywood’s Creative Director John Murdy, “The first is awareness. We want to created haunted mazes based on movies that fans know and love. The second is environments. We put a heck of a lot of effort into creating these movie quality environments, and so we really look for that when we’re watching a movie. We don’t just watch these movies as fans, we watch them with an eye for ‘Hey could we use this for Horror Nights’. And the third is really great iconic characters that we can bring to life with live actors.”
But what makes Evil Dead stand out even more?
“One of the things I really loved about the new Evil Dead film is that the hero is a woman,” Murdy said. “You have Natalie, Olivia, you know, great roles for women. And I’ve always felt scaring people was not a boy’s club…Sometimes you get that cliche in this industry. ‘Oh lets just hire a big scary guy’, but over the years one thing I’ve certainly learned is that a lot of our female ‘scaractors’ are amazing at what they do. Year’s ago I had a girl come up to me and say ‘I don’t want to be all like ‘help me, help me’ she said ‘I want to scare people’ and that really resonated with me, and now they’re getting the opportunity, probably more than they ever have before.”
Evil Dead Director Fede Alvarez is equally excited about seeing his movie come to life at this year’s event.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Alvarez. “I was at Universal about two or three weeks ago, showing some friends around the city, including my friend, the co-writer who wrote Evil Dead with me…and you go into the tours(rides) of other movies and we were saying ‘someday buddy, someday there will be a tour for a movie that we made’ and we had no idea about this until I think two days after that we got the call and find out that you(Universal) were building all this…I had a chance to read the treatment…and it’s mind-blowing, it’s like walking into the movie.”
Fortunately the Evil Dead maze will be at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Orlando. Regardless of which coast you live on or which city you plan to vacation to, you’ll be able to experience the Evil Dead coming to life! But if you’re courageous enough to brave both cities you might be in for a treat.
“That’s one of the really cool things about Halloween Horror Nights in both Hollywood and Orlando, is they’re not carbon copies of the exact same attraction.” said Mike Aiello from Universal Orlando’s Entertainment team. “Obviously there are a lot of similarities when you’re dealing with a single film like Evil Dead. But I think it’s really cool that if you go to Orlando you might see a different scene than you see in Hollywood. And one thing we know about our fan, is that horror fans are just rabid fans. And you will see a lot of people that will travel to both parks and I’ve always thought it’s really cool that they might see slightly different things depending on which park they are in.”
All I know is that I’m excited to check out Evil Dead at this year’s Halloween Horror Night’s at Universal Studios. We had the chance to attend last year and brave The Walking Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silent Hill with my friend Bridget Marquardt from Girls Next Door. Check out last year’s coverage from Universal Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights:
We Survive Halloween Horror Nights with Bridget Marquardt
You can also check out our behind the scenes look at how they created the monsters at Universal in 2012:
Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights 2012: Behind the Scenes – Monsters and Makeup
And finally, take a look at how they built the mazes at Universal in 2012:
Be sure to check back in as we approach October to see all of CraveOnline’s coverage of Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights 2013!
