Disney Was Concerned That The New HAUNTED MANSION Movie Was Too Scary

As reactions to Disney’s Haunted Mansion have been coming out there’s been a good amount of talk about how scary the film actually is. This is great to hear because I was hoping for a Haunted Mansion movie that actually incorporated some good scares into the story, if you’re going to make a movie based on the Haunted Mansion ride, you’ve got to make it scary!

Director Justin Simien was recently talking about the movie in an interview with CB and he shared that there were things in the movie that Disney thought would be too scary for audiences! Luckily during the test screening, the kids wanted more thrills! The director explained:

"There were some things that the studio thought would be too scary, and then we started to screen the movie and the first folks in, we'd be like, 'Is the movie too scary?' Kids would raise their hands like, 'No, I can handle it. We want more.' And so eventually there were things that I truly didn't think were, especially involving the Hat Box Ghost, and especially with some of the jump scares, that I wasn't sure if it was really going to make it through, but it did because the kids wanted more of it. And I kept saying my first Disney movies, those are still the scariest movies I've ever seen. So I talk about Pinocchio becoming a donkey, Snow White getting lost in the forest, these things are terrifying. Like Simba losing Mufasa, these are scary moments. And kids can handle it. And if you just respect them enough to handle the story, they can do it. And we just leaned into that. Life is scary." 

I’m just happy that we are actually going to get a Haunted Mansion movie that will be filled with some thrills and chills that the whole family will enjoy.

Haunted Mansion “is about a woman and her son who enlist a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid their home of supernatural squatters.” They find themselves in a spooky adventure where they have to solve the mystery of the mansion and if they don’t, they will be stuck there for eternity.

The movie features an all-star ensemble cast including LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Rosario Dawson, and Danny DeVito star, with Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota, Winona Ryder, Dan Levy, and Hasan Minhaj will also appear in the new movie. Then there’s Jared Leto, who is taking on the role of the infamous Hatbox Ghost.

Haunted Mansion opens in theaters on July 28th.