Michael Dougherty Reveals How Warner Bros. Nearly Killed TRICK ’R TREAT After Disastrous Test Screenings

It's crazy to think that one of the greatest Halloween horror movies ever made was nearly buried by the studio that financed it. Trick ’r Treat is my all-time favorite Halloween movie, and I've always loved how writer and director Michael Dougherty captured everything that makes the holiday so much fun. But getting the movie in front of audiences turned into a nightmare of its own.

During a Q&A at the FilmQuest Film Festival, moderated by Bill Earl of Variety, Dougherty opened up about the disastrous test screenings, the studio executives who didn't understand his movie, and how a passionate group of horror fans ultimately helped save it from obscurity.

The film started out with plenty of promise. Legendary Pictures had come aboard Superman Returns as a co-financier and was looking to develop its own projects. Trick ’r Treat became the company's first internally developed screenplay, and Dougherty was offered the opportunity to direct.

With a $12 million budget, the movie was shot in Vancouver over a couple of months. For Dougherty, it was a dream come true. Then Warner Bros. saw the first cut.

Dougherty explained: “It was just an abomination in their eyes. This was a previous regime at Warner Bros. They're gone now. They're all fired. The current Warner Bros. is wonderful. They love the movie. They've supported the festivals and annual screenings and whatnot. But the executives back then really had no faith in it, and they just shelved it.”

According to Dougherty, the studio had several problems with the movie, including the now-infamous sequence involving a school bus full of mentally challenged children driving off a cliff. Apparently, the executives were also confused by its combination of horror and comedy, interconnected anthology stories, and nonlinear storytelling.

As Dougherty put it: “One was having a serious issue with shoving a school bus full of kids over a cliff. It was in the script. It was storyboarded in detail. You'd think they would have brought it up earlier before I spent a million dollars on it.

“That was one thing. They didn't understand the mix of horror and comedy, or the fact that it was an anthology, or that it was nonlinear. Just a host of reasons.”

Things got even worse when Warner Bros. took Trick ’r Treat to a test screening in Winnetka, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. Dougherty recalled that the audience seemed to be enjoying the movie, laughing and applauding throughout the screening. But when the scores came back, the results were shockingly bad.

He said: “Then when we tested it, it tested through the floor. Horribly. They took the movie out to Winnetka, which is a suburb of L.A. It was weird because the audience at the time seemed to be enjoying it. They were laughing and applauding.

“But then we got the scores back, and if I remember correctly, I think it scored like a 12 out of 100. I've heard rumors that it might hold a record for the worst test screening scores, somewhere between us and The Cabin in the Woods. So at least I'm in good company.”

A 12 out of 100! That's a brutal score for any movie, but Dougherty wasn't convinced that it accurately reflected how audiences felt about his film.

Fortunately, he had some experience with test screenings from his college days, when he'd worked handing out audience response cards. He asked the studio to send him the cards so he could examine the results himself.

Dougherty said: “What he discovered made him question the entire screening process. But then I found out, because when I was in college I used to run test screenings. That was one of my part-time jobs. I used to hand out the cards after movies.

“So I asked them, ‘Send me the cards from the test screening.’ They're like, ‘Why?’ Just f*cking send them. I sat on my living room floor and laid out all the cards. It all came back to me, how to calculate the scores for test screenings.

“I found out that something like 65% of the recruited audience was Hispanic females between the ages of 35 and 49. I was like, ‘What the f*ck?’ I called them up, and they're like, ‘Well, that's your typical horror movie opening-weekend demographic.’

“Then I found out the prerequisites to get into the screening were that the last two horror movies you'd seen had to be something like Saw and Hostel. I was like, "Okay, guys, this is not the audience for Trick ’r Treat. I promise you."

The issue, as Dougherty saw it, wasn't the audience's demographic makeup. It was that the studio had recruited viewers based on their interest in movies like Saw and Hostel, which offered a very different kind of horror experience.

Trick ’r Treat isn't a torture-horror movie. It's a wickedly fun Halloween anthology filled with monsters, supernatural folklore, dark humor, and a love for the holiday itself. Dougherty believed the studio was testing it against the wrong expectations.

Legendary eventually agreed to give the movie another chance, this time recruiting viewers from comic book shops and Hot Topic.

“The difference was significant.” He said, “So Legendary agreed to test it again, but they went to comic book shops and Hot Topic. The scores went up by like 50%. It was a lesson in adversity and being willing to question authority.

“It didn't get us a theatrical release, but it helped move the needle a little bit so that we could at least get some prints made and take them out to film festivals. Doing that tour of film festival screenings eventually turned the tide a little bit.”

Even with those improved scores, Warner Bros. still wasn't willing to give Trick ’r Treat a theatrical release. Legendary even attempted to sell the finished movie to another distributor, arranging a screening for other studios, including Lionsgate and Universal. Nobody wanted it.

Dougherty recalled: “At one point, Legendary told Warner Bros., "Well, let's try to sell it to some other distributor. So we had a screening of the final cut for all the other studios in town, like Lionsgate, Universal, etc. And even then, everybody passed again. Nobody wanted to touch it. Nobody wanted to distribute it.

“The news kept getting worse and worse and worse. If I had any common sense, I would have given up.”

That's heartbreaking to hear, especially knowing what Trick ’r Treat would eventually become. Dougherty had poured his passion for Halloween into this movie, only to watch studio after studio reject it.

He also admitted that the experience took a serious emotional toll, saying: “Yeah, it's horrible. I had some really dark, lonely stretches in there because not only do you have the powers that be at the studio determining your fate, but on a passion project, one that you still believe in, it really hurt because people I thought had my back would slowly disappear. All of a sudden, the movie, and what felt like myself, were radioactive.”

Thankfully, the story didn't end there. In December 2007, Trick ’r Treat was invited to screen at Butt-Numb-A-Thon, the 24-hour film festival in Austin associated with Ain't It Cool News. The organizers wanted to show the movie last, after audiences had already sat through an entire day of films.

Dougherty thought it was going to be a disaster. Instead, it became a turning point. He continued: “December 2007. There was a film festival in Austin called Butt-Numb-A-Thon that Ain't It Cool News used to put on.

“They said, ‘We want to screen your film, and we want to show it last, at the end of this 24-hour film festival.’ I thought, ‘This is a suicide mission.’ These people are going to be exhausted and bored and angry. But at that point, I had nothing left to lose.

“So I went to Austin, sat through 24 hours of other movies, and mine started playing. At the end of it, they loved it. I'll never forget emerging into the red sunlight and people gathering around and saying how much they loved this movie. Because up until then, I was on the fence about whether it was a complete piece of shit or not.”

That screening helped kick off the word of mouth that would eventually turn Trick ’r Treat into a cult favorite. Positive reviews began appearing on movie sites, while Legendary worked to get the movie into more festivals.

Dougherty continued: “Articles and reviews started coming up, and that's when things slowly started to shift. Legendary convinced Warner Bros. to make some more film prints, and we took it out to other festivals, like Sitges, and a Fangoria screening on the Lower East Side of New York.”

“At every single screening, the word of mouth started to spread more and more. Even so, Warner Bros. refused to give any credit to those screenings. They just kept turning their noses up at it. But they at least compromised and said, ‘Fine, we'll put it on DVD in 2009.’

“I could make a movie about the making of that movie. Well, I haven't gotten the sequel yet.”

And that's how a movie that Warner Bros. reportedly had so little confidence in finally made its way to audiences.

The most frustrating part of this whole story is that the very things the studio didn't understand about Trick ’r Treat are what make it so special. Its anthology structure, twisted humor, creepy fairy-tale atmosphere, and genuine love of Halloween are exactly why I keep coming back to it every year.

It's also a reminder of how important the right audience can be. Those early festival screenings didn't magically change the movie. They simply put it in front of people who connected with what Dougherty was trying to do.

Now Sam is a Halloween icon, Trick ’r Treat has become an annual tradition for countless horror fans, and we're still hoping Dougherty gets to make Trick ’r Treat 2.

It's pretty incredible to think how close we came to missing out on all of that.

What do you think of Warner Bros.' handling of Trick ’r Treat, and when did you first discover the movie?