While Bloody-Disgusting’s Jeff Otto was on the set of Overture FIlms’ The Crazies, he not only had the chance to talk to Radha Mitchell about a sequel to Silent Hill, but he also got some inside word from star Danielle Panabaker about some cuts made to Warner Bros. and Platinum Dunes’ reboot of Friday the 13th, some of which might find their way onto the DVD/Blu-ray release this summer. How about an “alternate death”? Nice!
Scream Queen on-the-rise, Danielle Panabaker, says she isn’t worried about the “Scream Queen” moniker as she goes from the hit FRIDAY THE 13TH remake directly to Breck Eisner’s remake of George Romero’s THE CRAZIES. Bloody-Disgusting spoke with Panabaker on the set of CRAZIES in rural Georgia earlier this week. “Where does this negative connotation of a `Scream Queen’ come from?” the actress asked press on the set. “I mean, Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Lee Curtis… I feel like these movies can be so successful.”

The actress went on to say that her experience on the FRIDAY remake was extremely positive and she learned a great deal from producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form. “I did a horror film with them for a reason because they are so good at their job. To understand what goes into it and the formula was really fascinating to me. I have just the highest regard for them.”

If you haven’t already seen FRIDAY you might not want to read much further, as the actress discusses some alternate material from the film.

During the FRIDAY THE 13TH portion of our interview, Panabaker made reference to the alternate version of her character’s death. After piquing our interest, we asked her to elaborate. “The original idea was that my character got out onto the bus with Jared, Amanda and Derek,” Panabaker told press. “I think they couldn’t get a location that worked and there was a really cute line about, `Maybe on our next date we’ll do something a little more romantic,’ [and] then my character gets it. [It’s] after this big fight involving a fire extinguisher and all this crazy stuff. But when it came time to actually shoot the bus scene, they decided I couldn’t be at the bus. They had to come up with a death for me that came before those characters got to the bus.”

The somewhat jumbled romantic entanglement’s of FRIDAY’s characters weren’t completely clear to audiences, particularly in relation to the exact definition of Panabraker’s Jenna with Travis Van Winkle’s Trent character at the beginning of the movie. “I can’t believe, thinking back, how much was actually cut out of FRIDAY,” said Panabaker. “All this different stuff. There was a scene where Trent tells my character, `That’s our bedroom.’ It’s a little bit more in the script even than I think in what we shot. There was a scene where I was in the bedroom. So the relationships were a little bit clearer. There was a moment that didn’t make it into the film where my character looks at Bree (Julianna Guill) and is like, `What are you doing with my man!’ Not that he’s really mine because I’ve been off in the woods with someone else.” (Laughs)