I was at the UOAP HHN Q&A event last night which was great, hosted by the creative team. No photos or video was allowed so I'm reciting from memory.
There was a few things that came up that I thought were worth sharing -
- IT House - It came across that this was considered and discounted fairly early in the process for this year as it wasn't "the right IP, nor the right time". It was also mentioned again towards the end of the answer that this year wasn't the right time so it certainly sounded like this may be one filed for future years.
- HHN29 - The first house for next year's event has already been pitched to Mike Aiello. Production for HHN is effectively a 14 month journey. No details unfortunately!
- HHN30 - The 30th Anniversary is planned to be the "biggest ever HHN event" and some thought has already been given towards it. The context behind this answer may be important though as, although you would expect an anniversary event to be "the biggest yet", the previous question was talking about the increase to 10 houses this year. I got the feeling that "biggest ever" may have been a nod towards another house number increase but may just have been coincidence in timing.
- Carey, OH - Pieces of info are already out there that this was the home town of the creative manager, however this came about purely as a result of a meeting to find a scary little town that could be used as the basis of some house/zone elements. There wasn't really much more to it than that!
- Background to Seeds of Extinction - This was an interesting question that shed some light on the thought process behind creation of "originals". The first section of the answer focused on the background to SOE itself which was actually loosely based on the History channel TV series Life After People
Life After People - Wikipedia , watching the clips now I'm not sure how I never made the connection before. The visuals within the series of the overgrown landmarks and emptiness was the main draw towards this. The 2nd part of the question related to how originals in general come to fruition. Generally the IP houses are the first to be brought to the board. Once these are decided upon, originals are then used to plug the "genre gaps" across the horror spectrum. SOE was also the final house to be decided upon for this year's event.
- Background to Slaughter Sinema - This came about as an amalgamation of a number of ideas that had been previously considered for standalone houses but it was felt that there just wasn't enough substance to them individually. Interestingly it was mentioned that there was "more than 20" ideas left on the board that weren't included this year and that those "may remain there for another day" ie. Slaughter Sinema 2!
- Halloween 3 - Consideration was given to a Halloween 3 based house (unclear if for this year or prior years) but the feeling is that in using the Halloween franchise people will expect Micheal Myres. As he's not in the 3rd film it was felt there would be disappointment from the GP if this movie was used as the basis for a house
- Stranger Things - There initially wasn't any plans to include the kids from ST in the house as they simply weren't seen as "scary enough". Eventually it was decided though that not including them would disappoint the hardcore ST fanbase that were attracted to HHN by this IP so they were written in later on. The aim for ST was also to make the house scarier than the GP may expect based on the series hence the large number of demogorgons throughout. These were the only real "scary" character in the series that could be used.
- Bill & Ted - The inevitable question came up regarding B&T. The answer was interesting though. The first part of the answer was about how it was good to have advance notice of the impending end to allow last year's show show to wrap things up and not simply left like a TV series cancelled between series. The second part of the answer though focused of the future. It was said that there will not be a new "pop culture" style show as they fear this will be seen as a poor-relation to B&T. AOV was chosen to fill the FFL stadium this year as it was "the best fit in the time frame [they] had". There wasn't any indication that AOV was a 2nd choice or such in the words used, however there was a LOT of praise given to AOV, almost to the extent that it felt it was being overly praised like when you try to convince someone to believe in something that you don't really believe yourself. I found that interesting. Not to say that the team weren't 100% behind AOV once the decision was made, it just seemed that it maybe wasn't a 100% unanimous decision. The answer was finished with "never say never" to a B&T return, it felt more than a token to keep the crowd interested and more of a realisation within the decision makers that HHN needs a show like B&T but that it can't be replaced with a "new" pop culture style theme/IP.
All in all it was a great 60 mins or so and I felt it added a lot of context to the event as a whole. I would highly recommend attending something like it should anyone get the chance to do so!