MOVIE NEWS – Paramount executives are “shocked” by Paul W.S. Anderson’s horror film Event Horizon, with one even noting that it could “taint” Star Trek.

After 25 years, Event Horizon has gained a cult following and is considered by many to be one of the best horror sci-fi films ever made. Written by Philip Eisner and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the film is set in the future and follows a rescue team who board a missing spaceship hoping to find survivors, but what they find instead is a nightmare. Released on 15 August 1997, the film stars Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan and Joely Richardson.

To mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of the film, Anderson talked a lot about Event Horizon in a new interview with Variety.

At the time of its release, there really weren’t many feature films that were quite like it. Paramount executives were apparently “shocked” by what they saw when Anderson was working on Event Horizon, and as the filmmaker explains, this resulted in “a lot of tough notes.”

“I think Paramount was a little shocked. It had all this gross horror and all these disturbing images. I don’t think anyone at the studio had really seen that stuff before because I was shooting in England. Generally, people from the studio watch what the main unit shoots, but all of the horror stuff was being done second unit, directed by me on the weekends. I don’t think anyone at the studio actually watched the second unit material, so they hadn’t seen all the impalings and all the other people getting their eyes out and the intestines. I got a lot of tough notes.”

In the interview, Anderson also says that a person at Paramount suggested to him that making a space movie with such horrific imagery could potentially tarnish the Star Trek brand.

“Someone actually said to me, ‘We’re the studio that makes Star Trek!’ They weren’t only horrified by my movie; they felt I was besmirching ‘Star Trek’ somehow, because I was also in space and doing all this terrible stuff.”

In honour of the 25th anniversary, a new limited edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Steelbook of Event Horizon is now available. As for Anderson, he is shooting his next film, In the Lost Lands, with Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista, in November.

Source: Variety