The huge behind the scenes problems on The Addams Family When we talk about difficult film productions, the same names seem to come through. Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, for instance, are productions with well- told stories of how those behind the scenes went to proverbial hell and back. In more recent times, most of us are more than familiar with the hell that those behind World War Z went through to get it to the screen. Watch Clear Lake, WI Dailymotion. What I though would be a bit different though is take a generally very successful film, and dig a bit deeper to see if there was a troubled story there. One where behind the scenes issues are rarely talked about. Given that I came to this piece straight after writing about 1.

I settled on The Addams Family. It turns out, for a change, that I chose well. The Addams Family was one of the few box office highlights of 1. Off the back of a modest budget of $3. US (where its take nearly matched that of Hook). It was a box office highlight in a year that had precious few of them.

The Addams Family, released in March 1992, is the best selling pinball machine of all time. Designed by Pat Lawlor and Larry DeMar and manufactured by Midway (under. The Addams Family Blu-ray (1991): Starring Raul Juliá, Anjelica Huston and Christopher Lloyd (I). Con artists plan to fleece the eccentric family using an accomplice. News and reviews on the trends and rising stars in movies, music, television and more. TVAndMovies The "Addams Family Values" Cast Reveals Behind-The-Scenes Secrets 20 Years Later Released on Nov. 19, 1993, the sequel to the film remake of Charles.

But it nearly didn't get to cinemas at all. Beginnings. The film was eventually released by Paramount Pictures, but its origins lay at 2. Century Fox. In particular, with producer Scott Rudin, who was head of production at the studio at the time. He pitched the idea of a movie based on Charles Addams' cartoon originals of The Addams Family (rather than the TV series that had followed) to his colleagues at Fox, and he was met with enthusiasm.

What could possibly go wrong? Er, quite a lot. For Fox didn't have the rights to The Addams Family. In fact, they lay with Orion Pictures, not that the firm was then actively doing anything with them. Orion held the rights to a library of properties from a firm called Filmway, and The Addams Family TV show was part and parcel of that. And because it owned the rights to the old TV show, the firm also held the option to make a film. Charles Addams had died by this stage too, and further crucial rights had been left to his second wife. Fox tried to buy said rights, and failed.

It can be tricky to find truly scary movies that the whole family can enjoy without having to cover anyone’s eyes or squirm with embarrassment.

Orion, it turned out, was going to try and get a new TV show going, so wasn't willing to give them up. The problem everyone faced though was that The Addams Family was unknown to an audience under roughly 4. Conversely, the not dissimilar The Munsters continued to enjoy repeats and bring in a new collection of younger viewers. Outside America in particular, The Addams Family had not sustained the same level of interest.

And It Begins.. Things, however, changed. Addams' ex- wife sold the remaining rights to Orion, and the firm decided to press ahead a movie take instead. Morlocks Full Movie more.

The studio brought Rudin on board, now free of his Fox duties. It looked like The Addams Family was finally happening. So then: a script was produced, with the first draft penned by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson, who had collaborated beforehand on Edward Scissorhands. Paul Rudnick came in to do further work (and would write the eventual sequel, Addams Family Values), and the story runs that lots of rewrites took place.

Next, it was director time. And you know those stories, where someone gives an interview and tells you that so and so was the first and only choice for the job? That absolutely was not the case here: Tim Burton, for one, was strongly linked at one stage with the director's chair.

It was reportedly quite a list. The job, though, ended up going to Barry Sonnenfeld. Sonnenfeld has since gone on to make three Men In Black films, with Wild Wild West and Get Shorty also amongst a long line of credits. Even appreciating that The Addams Family was his directorial debut, he'd previously more than earned his stripes as a director of photography on the likes of Big, Misery and the brilliant Miller's Crossing. Bluntly, he knew his way around a movie set.

The film, however, would nearly break him. Watch Private Peaceful HD 1080P. As he told Empire magazine back in 1. Sonnenfeld admitted "I lost 1. And the tension was just incredible" (in the same interview, he recalled being hired by The Coen Brothers to shoot Blood Simple: "I was so nervous I threw up 1. There seemed to be a theme here).

It was three weeks into directing the film that things went very wrong. Again, as he recalled in the same interview, "I was standing behind a chair when I started to feel this tremendous pressure in my chest, as if someone was blowing up a balloon inside me. Before I knew what was happening, I got very dizzy and tried to sit down and - wham! I'd passed out". Sonnenfeld regained consciousness, weeping as he did. Producer Scott Rudin, just weeks into production, had a director who was teetering on the edge. He moved quickly, and tried to order everyone home, but as Sonnenfeld said back in 1. I remember begging Scott, please let me get up and get going again.

If we have to stop every time I faint or start to cry, we'll never get this movie done". Production resumed quickly, and nobody got the half day off they thought they were getting. Sonnenfeld, in a 2. Vulture interview, would call it a "sciatic time". Further Issues. The shoot went on for 2.

With three months of filming left, its director of photography - Owen Roizman - quit to go and take on another film (he would still get the final credit on the movie, interestingly). Gale Tattersall, the new DP came in to finish the film - without credit - but within weeks, the film had to stop for a few days. Tattersall was rushed to hospital, and would not complete the movie. As it happened, Sonnenfeld had no real option but to take on DP duties himself, as well as directing the film.

It can't have helped his stress levels. Next up, Raul Julia, starring as Gomez Addams, had to miss filming for several days when a blood vessel burst in his eye. So that was further rearranging that needed to be done. And then another health issue struck. The film was being shot in Los Angeles, but Sonnenfeld's home was in New York. When his wife fell ill with weeks of shooting still to go, Sonnenfeld went back home to visit her, all the while with his debut feature to complete and shoot.

It would be fair to say that making The Addams Family was stressful. But amazingly, it was going to get worse. The Orion Problem. We've talked on and off about Orion Pictures before at Den Of Geek, given that the firm is one of the most notorious boom and bust stories in Hollywood's recent history.

Off the back of the huge success of films such as The Silence Of The Lambs and Dances With Wolves, Orion should have been flush with cash. But Orion backed too many bad, expensive movies, and was running out of cash.