Taglines: Death is no way to make a living!
After a car accident in which his wife, Debra, was killed and he was injured, Frank Bannister develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he then gave up his job as an architect, letting his unfinished “dream house” sit incomplete for years, and put these skills to use by befriending a few ghosts and getting them to haunt houses in the area to drum up work for his ghostbusting business; Then Frank proceeds to “exorcise” the houses for a fee. But when he discovers that an entity resembling the Grim Reaper is killing people, marking numbers on their forehead beforehand, Frank tries to help the people whom the Reaper is after!
The Frighteners is a 1996 New Zealand-American fantasy horror comedy film directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with his wife, Fran Walsh. The film stars Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, R. Lee Ermey and Jake Busey.
Jackson and Walsh conceived the idea for The Frighteners during the script-writing phase of Heavenly Creatures. Executive producer Robert Zemeckis hired the duo to write the script, with the original intention of Zemeckis directing The Frighteners as a spin-off film of the television series, Tales from the Crypt.
With Jackson and Walsh’s first draft submitted in January 1994, Zemeckis believed the film would be better off directed by Jackson, produced by Zemeckis and funded/distributed by Universal Studios. The visual effects were created by Jackson’s Weta Digital, which had only been in existence for three years. This, plus the fact that The Frighteners required more digital effects shots than almost any movie made until that time, resulted in the eighteen-month period for effects work by Weta Digital being largely stressed.
The Frighteners (1996)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, Jake Busey, Angela Bloomfield, Troy Evans, Elizabeth Hawthorne
Screenplay by: Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
Production Design by: Grant Major
Cinematography by: John Blick, Alun Bollinger
Film Editing by: Jamie Selkirk
Costume Design by: Barbara Darragh
Art Direction by: Dan Hennah
Music by: Danny Elfman
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: July 19, 1996
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