Магазинчик ужасов: История создания фильма Фрэнка Оза

1986 film by Frank Oz

Little Shop of Horrors is a 1986 American horror comedy musical film directed by Frank Oz. It is an adaptation of the 1982 off Broadway musical of the same name by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, which is itself an adaptation of the 1960 film The Little Shop of Horrors by director Roger Corman. The film, which centers on a floral shop worker who discovers a sentient carnivorous plant that feeds on human blood, stars Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, and the voice of Levi Stubbs. The film also features special appearances by Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray. It was produced by David Geffen through The Geffen Company and released by Warner Bros. on December 19, 1986. Little Shop of Horrors was filmed on the Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage at the Pinewood Studios in England, where a "downtown" set, complete with overhead train track, was constructed. Produced on a budget of $25 million, in contrast to the original 1960 film, which, according to Corman, only cost $30,000, it was well received by critics and audiences alike, eventually developing a cult following. The film's original 23 minute finale, based on the musical's ending, was rewritten and reshot after test audiences did not react positively to it.

David Geffen was one of the original producers of the off Broadway show and he began planning to produce a feature film adaptation. Originally Steven Spielberg was attached to serve as an Executive producer with Martin Scorsese attached to direct the film, which he wanted to shoot in 3D, but production was stalled when a lawsuit was filed by the original film's screenwriter and actor, Charles B. Griffith. John Landis was also attached to the project for a time. Music producer and Four Seasons member Bob Gaudio adapted and produced the musical's songs for the film. Geffen then offered the film to Frank Oz, who was finishing work on The Muppets Take Manhattan around the same time. Oz initially rejected it, but later had an idea that interested him in the cinematic aspect of the project. Oz spent a month and a half restructuring the script which he felt was stage bound. Geffen and Ashman liked what he had written and decided to run with it. Oz was also studying the Off Broadway show and how it was thematically constructed, in order to reconstruct it for a feature film. The original cut of the film differs only slightly from the stage play. The title song is expanded to include an additional verse to allow for the opening credits. The song "Ya Never Know" was rewritten into a calypso inspired song called "Some Fun Now", although some of the lyrics were retained. Four other songs ("Closed for Renovation", "Mushnik and Son", "Now [It's Just the Gas]", as well as "Call Back in the Morning") were cut from the original production score, and "Finale (Don't Feed the Plants)" does not appear in the theatrical release of the film. A new song, "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space", was written by Ashman and Menken for the film.

Greene, who portrayed Audrey in the original off Broadway production, was not originally set to reprise her role. The studio wanted Cyndi Lauper, who turned it down. Barbra Streisand was also rumored to have been offered the part. After Greene's casting, Oz described her as "amazing," and said, "I couldn't imagine any other Audrey, really. She nailed that part for years off Broadway."

Oz and Ashman wanted to retain the ending of the musical where Seymour and Audrey die and the plant succeeds and takes over the city of New York, but Geffen was against it. "He said you can't do that", Oz recounts. "But again he knew what Howard and I wanted to do, so he supported us." Oz and Ashman scrapped Audrey and Seymour's grim deaths and the finale rampage, and Ashman rewrote a happier ending, with Jim Belushi replacing Paul Dooley (who was unavailable for the re shoot) as Patrick Martin. The musical number "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" was left mostly intact from the original cut, with new shots of Audrey observing from a window added in. A brief sequence from the "Mean Green Mother" number was also removed in which Seymour fires his revolver at Audrey II, only to discover that the bullets ricochet harmlessly off of the plant. In the happy ending, Audrey II is destroyed and Seymour, Audrey, and humanity survive. This happy ending is made somewhat ambiguous, however, with a final shot of a smiling Audrey II bud in Seymour and Audrey's front yard. Tisha Campbell was unavailable for the final appearance of the chorus girls in the yard and was replaced with a lookalike seen only from the waist down. The scene in which Seymour proposes to Audrey originally contained the reprise of "Suddenly, Seymour". This scene was re shot and the reprise was placed later in the new ending. In the final theatrical cut, the only miniatures that are retained are the New York City streets passing behind Steve Martin's motorcycle ride at the beginning of "Dentist!" The film grossed $39 million at the box office, which, from the viewpoint of the studio, was considered an underperformer. However, it became a smash hit upon its home video release in 1987 on VHS and Beta.

Little Shop of Horrors was the first DVD to be recalled for content. Geffen also claimed to have a color copy of the original ending, while the studio had lower quality, black and white duplicates as their own color print was destroyed in a studio fire years earlier. But Geffen had not known, until after the DVD was pulled, that the studio did not know there was a colored copy of the original ending in existence. Warner Bros. reconstructed and restored the ending in an alternate edit, with re discovered color negatives of the sequence and the help of production notes from Oz and others on the film's creative team. It was released on DVD and Blu ray on October 9, 2012, with features returning from the original DVD. It was initially subtitled as "The Intended Cut", but changed to "The Director's Cut" once Oz began to support the release. The new edit was screened at the 50th New York Film Festival in the "Masterwork" line up on September 29, 2012, alongside titles such as Laurence Olivier's Richard III and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. Oz worried that the audience would react negatively at the 2012 screening; however, "the audience accepted Audrey and Seymour's deaths with applause and roared in glee during the plant rampage," says Oz.

In January 2020, Full Circle Cinema reported that a remake of the film was planned, with Taron Egerton in talks to play Seymour, Scarlett Johansson as Audrey and Billy Porter voicing Audrey II. The Hollywood Reporter affirmed in February that the film was being developed by Warner Bros. Pictures with Greg Berlanti directing and producing with Marc Platt and David Geffen, Porter confirmed, and Egerton and Johansson in negotiations. Additionally, Chris Evans was also in talks to play Dr. Scrivello. Matthew Robinson was to write the screenplay. As of May 2021, the remake had been postponed indefinitely, and in September 2022, it was announced that the remake had been cancelled. In March 2024, Deadline Hollywood reported that Corman, Brad Krevoy and Charles Cohen were preparing to produce a reboot film, Little Shop of Halloween Horrors, with the intention of inaugurating a media franchise. Regular Corman collaborator Joe Dante is set to direct the film from a screenplay by Charles S. Haas.