‘Shazam 2’ Backlash Almost Put ‘Until Dawn’s Director Off Directing IP Movies Ever Again

“I knew I wanted to do Until Dawn once I read the script,” explains director David F. Sandberg as we discuss his latest film inspired by the iconic video game. However, there was one thing still holding him back. “To be honest, after Shazam 2, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I ever want to do an IP thing again,’ because the fans can get very passionate and have specific ideas about how things should be. They can get very angry with you, and it can be death threats and all these kinds of things, so I was like, ‘Do I really want to do that again?'”

“Gary Dauberman, who I worked with on Annabelle: Creation, sent me this script, and it was so cool. I would get to do all these different horror genres, and I’ve always wanted to do a horror movie that is full of practical effects, gore, monsters, and all these things. I couldn’t say no.”

One year after her sister disappears, Clover, played by Anora’s Ella Rubin, and a bunch of friends head to where she went missing looking for answers. However, the journey leads them to a compound where they are trapped and hunted, killed one by one, but caught in a bloody loop where they die over and over until they can survive until dawn. Until Dawn is R-rated and lands in theaters on Friday, April 25, 2025.

“What I liked about the script was that they left the game alone,” Sandberg enthuses. “Rather than try to recreate what was already pretty much a very good movie, they expanded on the universe and did a continuation of that. Instead of the same Until Dawn that people have played and seen, it’s more Until Dawn. I felt like, ‘Fans have to appreciate that, right? Of course, there are still going to be people who get very upset. I’ve seen people upset that there’s no snow in the movie, and it’s like, ‘Really? Was that the most important thing about the game?'”

“I remember with Shazam, there were people who were very upset that it wasn’t dark and gritty. There was even a guy who released a trailer that he had edited to make it look dark and gritty because he was going to do his own fan edit. I don’t know if he ever completed it, of like a dark, gritty Shazam, where he cut out all the humor and made it sepia tone instead. Sure, that’s cool if you want a gritty Shazam, but to me, the comics were never that, really.”

‘The Last Of Us’ Helped Pave the Way For ‘Until Dawn’

Traditionally, outside of multimillion-dollar franchises like Resident Evil, it has been hard to get audiences to turn out en masse for films based on video games. However, things are changing.

“It’s only in recent years that they’ve all been working,” Sandberg muses. “With The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and now The Minecraft Movie is doing all the money in the world. I don’t know. The old Super Mario Brothers movie from the 80s and the Street Fighter movie weren’t really great. I don’t know if I’m missing someone, but I think The Last of Us showed the way. Video games have become more cinematic now that you can do more.” Fallout has also been a significant ratings and critical hit for Amazon’s Prime Video.

“How much has The Last of Us changed things? I’m not sure,” he continues. It helped in terms of people’s willingness to want to do these things. Until Dawn is also a PlayStation production, so I’m sure seeing that success made them want to do even more things, but beyond that, I don’t know.”

As a lifelong horror fan with a successful track record in the genre, Sandberg wanted to do things the way his heroes did and use as many practical effects as possible.

“As a kid, I would see these movies, read books, and watch behind-the-scenes features on the practical effects and makeup. I’ve just always wanted to do that,” the director explains. “My previous two horror movies were more supernatural movies, so they don’t have a lot of that. I love the magic trick element, but it is very challenging. I understand why a lot of movies are not made that way anymore, especially with tightening deadlines and schedules, because it takes a lot of time, and you don’t get a lot of shots at it, maybe one or two. If it’s a Shazam movie where everything is added afterward, you can do take after take until you get the performances you want. This way is a lot trickier and takes time but is also very satisfying when it works.”

“As a horror fan, I really like practical effects in horror movies, but there are also combinations of it. One of my favorite shots in Until Dawn is when a character gets their head smashed with a sledgehammer. We did smash a physical dummy head on the day, which broke and looked really cool, and that was the version in the movie for the longest time. Then the VFX vendor, UPP, shot an extra element they had: a skull filled with goo that they smashed with a sledgehammer and comped it in. Now, it’s my favorite shot in the movie because it’s so over the top. I’m not against visual effects, but doing practical effects is fun and satisfying.”

However, not everything he tried made it to the final cut.

“There’s a shot of a full moon that’s still in the movie that gives a hint to what that was, but it didn’t really work, so we’re putting it all on the deleted scenes on the home video release. I like showing all that stuff, especially because we went through the trouble of making and shooting all those things, so I want to put it out there,” he adds.

Using practical effects gave Sandberg and his team wiggle room to get creative. The loop element of the narrative meant they were able to kill characters multiple times, and each time in a new way, but that also offered challenges.

“We could go pretty brutal with these kills,” he explains. “There are some deaths in the scene where you’re like, ‘Well if that were the end for that character, that would be pretty bleak and sad,’ but they do come back. Another important element to make that work was that they couldn’t come back forever and just keep doing this over and over again. There had to be stakes and a limit to it, which is why you can only do it for so many days in the movie. Dying over and over takes a toll on you, just both mentally and physically, because you start changing. It definitely enabled us to have a lot of fun with that, but we had to have limitations to it.”

“The great thing was that every night was different, with different threats that appeared, so while the night started over each time, it was not the same night. That adds to this feeling of what’s going to come next. You don’t know. What’s going to be the new threat? That’s scary for the characters as well.”

One particularly gruesome scene in Until Dawn keeps audiences talking long after their minds are blown in the theater: the bathroom scene.

“It was certainly my favorite when I was reading the script,” Sandberg laughs. “I was like, ‘I can’t wait to do this. I know exactly how to do it. We’ll just lock off the camera, shoot the actor, take them out, put in a dummy, and blow it up.’ However, because of the way we did it, we had to shoot it on the very last day. It destroyed the set with blood and stuff everywhere in these explosions. It’s one of the few times something has turned out exactly how I imagined it, which is rare in movies. There are compromises, and things don’t work out exactly, but I’m very happy with that one. It’s exactly the way I imagined it.”

“We knew it worked when we were on set because of how we shot it; it was just a simple cut. We could play it back, splice it together with video playback and have a look at it right away, and everyone just reacted with laughter and like, ‘Holy s**t!’ We watched it on repeat over and over again, so I didn’t have any doubt that it would work with an audience because it worked for everyone on set.”

‘Until Dawn’ Is Splattered With Easter Eggs And Homages

In addition to the Easter Eggs from the Until Dawn world that litter the film, Sandberg set out to seed it with inside jokes in another way: by cameoing on one of the Missing posters on a pin board.

“You’ve got to have a cameo in there somewhere, right?” the filmmaker laughs. “That whole wall is crew members, a couple of stock photos, and people we know. I had to put myself in there as well. I like to have little cameos like that. I’m also the masked monster in the red hallway.”

Like cinematic greats who have come before and inspired him, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Until Dawn is by no means the first time Sandberg has inserted himself into one of his visions.

“Sometimes it’s just my voice. In Shazam, I was the voice of Mister Mind, the little worm at the very end,” he recalls. “In Shazam 2, I was killed by a harpy. I’m out running in a field and get grabbed. In Lights Out, I’m the doctor’s voice on the tape they find. Did I do one for Annabelle: Creation? Maybe, but I don’t remember now. Maybe I didn’t have any cameo on that one.”

However, the biggest thing that mattered to effectively recreating the world of Until Dawn was securing Peter Stormare, known for his performances in Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Armageddon, Minority Report, and Constantine. Here, as he did in the original video game, the Swedish actor plays the villainous Dr. Hill.

“We all knew right from the start we needed to get him, and it’s always been my dream to work with him because I’m also from Sweden,” Sandberg explains. “Growing up seeing him in big Hollywood movies was like, ‘He’s a Swede. As a Swede, you can get to Hollywood. He’s proved it.’ I actually wanted to get him in my first movie, Lights Out, but the studio said, ‘Well, he’s too creepy and weird to play a family guy,’ so they said no. For this one, we had to get him, so I wrote him a letter in Swedish telling him that I’ve been wanting to work with him since my first movie and everything. He was all on board. He was like, ‘Well, in Swedish, we can talk s**t about everyone on set, and they won’t know.'”

“He cares very much about the character as well. He wanted to do it right, and he wanted not to ruin Hill’s legacy. The important thing was that Until Dawn could also work for people who hadn’t played the game. Maybe there’ll be slight confusion by the last shot, but Hill’s still around. He’s not gone.”