A few weeks ago, original Ghoulies creators Jefery Levy (Writer/Producer) and Luca Bercovici (Writer/Director) initiated an online campaign to persuade Sony to reboot the Ghoulies franchise after the series has laid dormant in the proverbial toilet bowl for over 25 years.
Speculation as to the concept of the new reboot has garnered much online discussion, and it only made sense to get the inside story from Jefery Levy himself.
Bloody Disgusting: Your reboot announcement has garnered a lot of online publicity.
Jefery Levy: It did, I couldn’t believe all the online attention.
BD: What are your plans for the proposed reboot?
JL: I wanna reboot the franchise. Not just one movie, I wanna try and make a three-picture deal.
BD: What would a Ghoulies reboot look like?
JL: What would that look like today? Without giving too much away, one can truthfully say that “Ghoulies” has become a part of pop culture, and it is this same pop culture that becomes both the milieu and the next victim for the “Ghoulies” of the 21st century; music, fame, technology, social media, all are grist for the “Ghoulies” mill. No icon too big to fiendishly destroy, no cow too sacred to be attacked with tiny, slavering jaws.
“They’ll get you in the end” will take on an entirely new and fiendishly funny meaning.
We will of course use live-action puppets and animatronics. But in addition to that, we will try to employ every other technology that exists right now – if it works for the movie – which is substantial. We’re thinking about holographic sequences with the Ghoulies. I don’t know if you’ve seen holographic technology with concerts and stuff, but it’s pretty amazing.
BD: The Gorillaz utilized that for a time.
JL: Yeah, they did. And of course, there’s a virtual reality game. So many things we can do with Ghoulies now. If we did this with Disney there would be a Ghoulies ride. By the way, I don’t necessarily want to do this movie for Sony, I just want them to give us the rights back or to make a deal on the rights. We don’t necessarily have to deal with them. I think we can take it to a number of places, and we will find someone who will make the movie. Whether it’s Netflix or Universal or Disney or Paramount or any of the other studios.
BD: On the original movie you and Luca flipped a coin to see who would direct. Who would take the reins this time round?
JL: Luca and I will probably serve as executive producers on this and we will hire some young hot writer and director. We’re old guys now so we’re gonna serve as executive producers to make this happen and oversee it, we’ll be very involved with the story and overseeing the entire franchise but I do not think Luca will be directing. Luca and I have already talked about this, there are so many younger people who well versed in the world of all these special effects now.
BD: Is there a reason it took so long to spearhead a new Ghoulies?
JL: Luca and I have been talking about it for the last ten years, but we just kind of thought it was right. I saw him in LA last Christmas, and we talked about how Ghoulies would be a great reboot because all the studios are rebooting all their franchises so I started trying to track down the rights – which became the most complicated detective investigation ever. I tracked it down to Lionsgate and an old friend of mine is the CEO of Lionsgate and he said, “I’m gonna put you in touch with my guy who handles all the rights of all our stuff” and he said, “We own the rights for 3, but we sold the rights for the next one to Sony, and Sony distributed IV so that’s what brought us to Sony. And they did indeed distribute Ghoulies IV. Once I had that information, I started contacting Sony and letting everyone online know that Sony is the place we need to deal with.
I think that a Ghoulies reboot, using current technology – with a little bit more money than we used to have – could be a very, very financially successful franchise for anyone that does it and super fun for the fans. We don’t have John Buechler but there are a lot of John Buechler protégé’s out there. We would definitely include puppetry; we wouldn’t abandon puppets but we would also use all the other things in the current tool kit of special effects. The whole thing has to be funny, with some scary stuff. When we were making Ghoulies, I considered it more of a comedy than anyone else. I thought it was really funny you know. I thought there’s only one way to really sell this kind of as a horror comedy – not taking it too seriously. And of course, I would love to have Michael Des Barres be in it as well. Michael Des Barres is still around, and he would definitely be invited to be back in the franchise.
Luca and I have grown up a lot and I think this will be super high class. It will be Ghoulies platinum… put it that way.
If you want more Ghoulies, sign the petition and pass it along!
