Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein are bringing Freaks 2 back to Vancouver, the city where their 2018 dark sci-fi thriller Freaks began a dramatic change in their Hollywood fortunes.
The filmmakers’ original movie, starring Emile Hirsch and Bruce Dern, earned more than $375 million worldwide during its theatrical run after making its world premiere at the Vancouver Film Festival. Its success turned the longtime collaborators into sought-after directors.
“That film changed our lives,” Lipovsky said while speaking from the Sony Pictures studio lot in Culver City, California.
The duo’s momentum continued with Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth installment in the supernatural horror franchise. Directed by Lipovsky and Stein, the film grossed more than $285 million worldwide. They now have a first-look deal at Sony and a team working with them to develop movies.
“It’s very hard to believe I’m sitting here on the Sony lot where we have our first look [deal] now,” Lipovsky said. “And we have a whole building of people now working with us to make movies, which is very surreal.”
A return to where it started
The Vancouver screenings of Freaks 2 carry particular meaning for Lipovsky, who grew up in the city and made the first film there. He attended the Vancouver Film Festival as a teenager, using a pass to watch five movies a day as well as press screenings during the three weeks before the festival.
“I remember seeing filmmakers up on the stage, presenting their films and wishing one day that would be me,” he recalled.
Freaks centered on 7-year-old Chloe, played by Lexy Kolker, who was kept inside a rundown suburban house by her protective and paranoid father, played by Hirsch. Lipovsky said the sequel finds the central character older and searching for something different.
“The first film was very much about a girl who can’t leave her house, and really wants a mom,” he explained. “And in the second film, she’s now much older. So she doesn’t want a mom. What she wants is a friend.”
The filmmaker said the new story explores how someone finds friendship and builds a relationship in a society that wants her dead.
Paramount Pictures has picked up Freaks 2. The sequel features Amanda Crew as a mother and Lorelei Olivia Mote as her daughter. The pair are trying to survive in a world determined to eliminate “freaks” like them while also seeking vengeance for their family.
The movie will screen Saturday night at Vancouver’s Rio Theatre. Another festival screening is set for the city’s historic Park Theatre, an art deco cinema that Lipovsky helped save from closure as a private investor alongside Osgood Perkins, Mike Flanagan, Sean Baker and Finn Wolfhard.
“It’s very special to be able to do the screening there, with a lot of the people that made the movie and a lot of my old friends in the audience and within minutes of where we shot the movie,” Lipovsky said.
His mother will also accompany him to the festival screenings. A single parent, she set aside her own goal of becoming a movie director and worked as a television producer at Vancouver’s Knowledge Network.
“Becoming a director back in the [19]80s wasn’t really a career path for many women, and she’s always been there by my side,” Lipovsky said. “And for her to see the kind of levels to which I’ve been able to create movies has been amazing.”
From rivals to collaborators
Lipovsky and Stein met nearly 20 years ago while competing against each other on On the Lot, Fox’s filmmaking competition series from Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett.
“We didn’t win, and we were off the lot,” Lipovsky said.
Nearly two decades later, they are working on a slate that includes an adaptation of the short story Long Lost for Amblin and Universal. They are also writers on Chris Columbus’ Gremlins 3 and are involved with Sony projects including an animated Venom movie and Metal Gear Solid.
Lipovsky believes original horror has helped make their rise possible. He pointed to the summer box office success of Backrooms and Obsession while arguing that horror remains one of the few genres in which audiences routinely turn out for original theatrical films.
“It’s the voice of the authors that are creating the work that audiences are becoming attracted to, and even more so when the work is original,” he said. “And Hollywood is definitely starting to pay attention to that.”
What Happens Next?
With Freaks 2 screening in Vancouver, a Paramount pickup secured and several studio projects in development, Lipovsky and Stein are entering a new chapter that once seemed difficult to imagine.
“Over 20 years of making movies, you get very used to things not happening,” Lipovsky said. “So when things start to click into place, your brain has a very hard time trying to accept that it’s actually real.”