Filmmaker Justin Simien, who created the Netflix series Dear White People, said he wanted to make the Disney reboot of Haunted Mansion “as black as possible.”
“I felt it was really important for the lead to be black, because this is set in New Orleans and it’s an 85% black town,” Simien, who recently completed Haunted Mansion for Disney’s Lucasfilm, told Yahoo! Entertainment.
“I wanted to make [the movie] as black as I can because that’s New Orleans,” Simien continued, adding that he wanted to “tell this ensemble story that I feel like I know how to do. And luckily, Disney agreed. That’s why it’s here. That’s why I’m here.”
The filmmaker went on to say, “I don’t really know how to make things that aren’t personal. It’s really hard to make a movie and it takes a really long time. And it’s kind of like being in a psychological torture chamber.”
“This was the longest movie I’ve ever [worked on], this [was] a hundred-plus days of shooting,” he added. “That is longer than it took to make a series of Dear White People. So for me to get out of bed, it’s got to be personal.”
Simien also mentioned his “incredible desire to bring the history of New Orleans and specifically black culture [to the movie],” adding, “This is the birthplace of jazz and the best food in the country.”
“And all of our popular cultures come out of this time in New Orleans where black people and white people and indigenous people and the Spanish and all these people were free. And it was short-lived, but it was long enough to produce this amazing, unique culture,” he said.
Haunted Mansion flopped spectacularly during its opening weekend, earning less than $35 million worldwide. “Disney could lose more than a hundred million on this dog,” Breitbart’s John Nolte wrote in his box-office analysis.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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