So, it’s that time of year again when we can expect cooler temperatures, colorful leaves, and a lot of seasonal treats! The nights begin to start sooner, and I feel happiness and calmness when I walk outdoors; the spooky season is upon us, which means Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights is just around the corner.
We had the privilege of taking a behind the scene look at two of this year’s mazes that were still under construction for the event – ‘Universal Monsters Legends Collide’ and ‘The Horrors of Blumhouse.’ We met with Creative Director John Murdy, who spoke humbly and excitedly about this year’s Halloween Horror Nights.
First up was ‘The Horrors of Blumhouse,’ which I was super excited about after watching The Black Phone (which is what part of this maze is inspired by). Murdy explains how this particular maze came about:
“Working with Blumhouse goes back to 2013; with Insidious, we’ve had a long relationship working with them. In the past, there were a couple of things different with these Horrors of Blumhouse from the mashups we did the previous two times. One, they were in a different location; we always used the movie theatre facade to set it up as if you were going to a Blumhouse horror film. Two, we always used three properties. We changed things this year twofold; one, when I saw Freaky, I thought I could have done the whole house on Freaky, actually. The first time I sat down to design this, I got to the end of my conceptual design and realized I had used up the entire house. It was always understood that we would use Freaky and The Black Phone. There was just so much content in mind that we didn’t need three films; we felt it would be better to expand on the two we had. Second, we are in the Waterworld queue, and there is this big overhead shade structure that is not so easy to take down; it is incredibly difficult to take down, and so we are limited on the height that we can go with this location, so that necessitated the different concept for the facade.”
-John Murdy, creative director. universal studios hollywood – halloween horror nights.
We made our way through the theme park to check out the second maze on the agenda, ‘Universal Monsters Legends Collide.’ If you’re a Universal Monster fanatic, you will think this house is off the chain. I can already tell that this original house will be a fan favorite! Murdy goes on to explain how the concept of this house was brought to reality:
“This is the fourth in a string of houses we’ve done to reinvent the Universal Monster brand for Halloween Horror Nights. This goes back to the house we did in 2018, Universal Monsters and 2019 Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, and last year we did the Bride of Frankenstein Lives, and now we are doing Legends Collide. Similar to Bride of Frankenstein Lives, this is an original story that we created and brings together three monster characters that all the classic Universal Horror Movie Monsters from the 20s, 30s, 40s, & ’50s never actually shared screen time, and that is The Mummy, The Wolfman, and Dracula which is amazing that never happened.”
“We co-developed this with our sister park in Orlando and the creative team over there, Charles Gray, who is the creative director of this particular house, and Michael Aiello, who has been associated with Horror Nights for a very long time; he is a different role right now, he focuses on the front end development with me on setting the slate and conceptualizes things, my art director Chris Williams, and myself. Coming out of Bride [of Frankenstein] last year, when we started talking about what we wanted to do in March last year, I had an idea of what I wanted to do while we were building Bride. Dracula, The Mummy, and The Wolfman is an original story I wanted to set up. Orlando had a different idea, they tried to set there’s in Egypt, and we went back and forth. I said, ‘why don’t you do part one, and we do part two, and we will just make it one big thing.’ Suppose you took the time to go to Orlando and Hollywood. In that case, you’d see two different experiences that were part of a larger story.”
-John Murdy, creative director. universal studios hollywood – halloween horror nights.
Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights begin Thursday, September 8th. Purchase tickets by clicking here. Be sure to check back to read up on our 2022 review!
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