The Eliza Dushku-starring 2003 horror film was followed by six other movies, with two more planned.
Some of the key figures in front of and behind the camera explained how it happened.
“We came across a traffic jam.
Emmanuelle Chriqui in ‘Wrong Turn (2003).Everett Collection
Someone came to us and said, ‘Oh, this could last for 14 hours.
My wife and I thought, ‘We’re going to miss our flight.
What are we going to do?’
‘Wrong Turn’ (2003).Everett Collection
“Anything could go wrong!”
This was the starting point for the horror filmWrong Turn.
“It’s so bizarre,” says cast member Chriqui.
Julian Richings in ‘Wrong Turn’ 2003.Everett Collection
When I heard about the reboot, I was like, ‘Suddenly, I feel old.’
“I was going to shoot it in Ohio.
I never got around to it.”
‘Wrong Turn’ (2003).Everett Collection
According to McElroy, the exec offered two pieces of advice.
The first was to add four or five more characters so they could be killed off later.
“He said, ‘You’ll sell it overnight.’
Henry Rollins in ‘Wrong Turn 2: Dead End’.20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
So I did exactly that.
I wrote it in three weeks.”
“Stan had done a bunch of horror films before he made bigger blockbusters.
‘Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines’.
This was a proper horror film that we hadn’t been able to do in a long time.”
Originally, all three of the mountain men were huge.
At that point, McElroy says, “We were off to the races to make the movie.”
‘Wrong Turn’ (2021).Everett Collection
“I had a little bit of heat,” the filmmaker admits.
“But she took more seriously that I liked the idea of doing horror films.”
The director was sent the script forWrong Turn, which he liked.
“There were a lot of companies involved.
It was like the United Nations to get casting approved.
I don’t know what the tiniest country on earth is, but that was me.”
Her traveling companions were played by Kevin Zegers, Lindy Booth, Jeremy Sisto, and Chriqui.
“It was really cool because the late Stan Winston was involved,” says Chriqui.
“He was thekingof monsters and creatures.
He was on set with us, which is really special looking back.”
“He’s a really interesting character actor,” says Schmidt of Richings.
“He was fearless about acting strange and it helped the movie enormously.
He’s the character that has the hysterical laugh.”
“It was more convenient than going to the West Virginia wilderness,” he says.
“But it was abigpark.
There was poison ivy.
It’s a park that had cliffs in it.”
“It was almost like a mini wilderness,” Richings adds.
“We weren’t likely to get many people wandering through.”
Chriqui was genuinely freaked out when she first encountered the actors in makeup.
“One of them made these horrific squealing sounds and the whole thing was so scary.
I was like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, thisisjust a movie.’
Their refuge is set on fire by the cannibals, forcing the trio jump into nearby trees.
“I was up in this harness, basically falling out of the tree, holding a branch.
It was that upward motion that dislocated my shoulder,” the actress says.
“It was all very dramatic and I had to go to the hospital.
I think everybody was in shock.
I went straight back to work the next day and just had to be super ginger with it.”
It’s an in-camera illusion, a magic trick really.”
“The funny thing is that the West Virginia tourist board administration denounced the film.
Literally, the governor came out to say, ‘This is not who we are!’
I thought,Oh good, I’ve hit a nerve.
“The reviews at the time were not good,” Schmidt acknowledges.
“It definitely horrified me.
Like, I’m speaking trauma.”
“And it was Julian.
Julian did that.”
“I didn’t know that little story,” Richings says.
“But I still get people coming up to me and doing the Three Finger laugh.”
“Stan’s contract and my contract paid pretty substantially for a sequelifit was a theatrical release.”
“So we did not do the sequel, the Stan Winston folks and me.”
McElroy would also not be involved with the fiveWrong Turnmovies that followed.
“They paid me off,” he says.
Lynch tried to convince Dushku to return and portray the film’s first victim.
“My pitch was [for] Eliza Dushku to play herself.
Her agents’ concern was, ‘Are you making fun of our client?’
I’m like, ‘Not at all.
“No matter what, I was choppingsomeonein half,” Lynch says with glee.
“I just had to find the right person to do it.”
Released on DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,Wrong Turn 2earned an impressive $9 million.
So it would have been a siege movie.
So I politely passed.”
It’s a cost-cutting pattern that would get progressively more severe as the franchise went on.
2014’sWrong Turn 6: Last Resortwas shot in Bulgaria by local filmmaker Valeri Milev.
Wrong Turn 6also had a sad real-life postscript.
A few years ago, Kulzer got in contact with McElroy about bringing the franchise back.
The question was, how do you update it?
The film pits a group of city folk against an ancient commune of Appalachian dwellers called the Foundation.
McElroy has recently been writing onStar Trek: Strange New Worldsand is developing a couple of projects with Blumhouse.
He has hopes of continuing theWrong Turnfranchise with at least a couple more entries.
“I’d love to finish it and see it all come out the way I wanted.”
If anything, maybe more sequels would help clear up a long-running misconception.
“I don’t like to write back and say, ‘Actually, that’s not me.’
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