Last night was the first ever HeyUGuys event and it went off with a bang! We teamed together with the amazing people from Who’s Jack Magazine to bring you a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers from brand new British horror / slasher movie, Demons Never Die at the Jameson Apartment in Soho which is in place for the duration of the London Film Festival.
Jon did a fantastic job anchoring the Q&A session which was attended by Director, Arjun Rose, Producer Rhian Williams from Exile and cast members, Jason Maza (who also produced), Shanika Warren-Markland and Andrew Ellis. The film was shot in just 18 days and from the trailer, it looks like a slick, gritty and we can’t wait to see the finished article when it’s released October 28th.
Arjun spoke about how John Carpenter movies and the Scream franchise affected his writing of Demons Never Die and how the idea came from an idea he had rather than a fully developed script. In the end Arjun wrote 1 page for the movie which the production company Exile loved and asked him to continue developing the script into the completed movie.
The cast also praised Arjun as a first time director for the way in which he put all the cast at ease and has made such a great film. Shanika summed it up nicely saying:
“Arjun was always very chilled and very calm and that helped make the set and the whole environment a very nice place to be.”
Jason Maza talks us through his his experince of working on the movie and with Arjun specifically:
“Arjun was very much a calming influence. For someone who’s a first time director, he knew exactly how he wanted it to be. He’d come from the school of thought that prepearation is key and he’d done a lot of work. he was completely prepared and never showed that he was struggling to us. The conditions were not always easy with rain, snow in the middle of a scene!
Andrew Ellis tells us what he saw in the script which brought him on board:
“I saw that British twist in the fact that in other movies, often you don’t get to know the characters until the third sequel but in this, within the 90 minutes, you know those characters and everyone can relate to at least one of them. For me, it was a sensitive subject but the way that was dealt with in the script, it’s the way people find that friendship and a way in which they cope with it.”
Producer Rhian Williams spoke about how the idea first came about and what we can except along with the fact that the way it’s all fallen into place is a little unconventional:
“Arjun started talking about the idea and I started thinking it was great and was the one we wanted to back and I said ‘let’s go for it’. I spoke to the board and they asked for more details and I asked Arjun to write script. He started off giving us one page and the film started off as a micro-budget movie for us and then the concept started to grow. The one page that he gave us was complete genius so we were confident hat the other 91 pages would be absolutely belting which of course they were.
Idris (Elba) came on board, we got a fantastic cast and we got more confident that this film was going to be a huge hit. The soundtrack is fantastic – Universal Music came on board and what we’ve actually managed to package together, sounds very flueky the way it all happened but we got serious about doing this, it all came together very well. It’s been called genre-busting but I think what we’ve ended up with is a hugely commercial British film. TF1 have picked it up internationally, it’s screening at AFM in a couple of weeks and we’ve already got international buyers.”
You could really see the family bond that had formed from this tight knit group of actors and filmmakers at the event and this is just small section of the wide cast which also includes Robert Sheehan, Reggie Yates, Tulisa Contostavlos, Emma Rigby, Femi Oyeniran, Jennie Jacques and Jacob Anderson. We’re very excited to see what heights Demons Never Die is taken to and we were so privileged to have many of the great cast and crew along to our event last night.
Thanks so much to everyone who came down to the event last night, to Jameson for the amazing venue, to the Demons Never Die crew for coming down and being so up for answering questions and to Who’s Jack for all the support with getting the event off the ground.
I’ve placed some photos below from the event for your viewing pleasure which you can click to enlarge. Demons Never Die is released in the UK 28th October and you can see all our coverage of the movie here.
