I loved the original movie (I had the poster on my wall in high school) so I was, like, why redo it? So we took the mall & the zombies & that’s about it as far as plot goes. I just thought, what’s another way this could go? https://twitter.com/horrormuseum/status/1315218037893591040

What many younger people don’t know is the online community went crazy at the idea the film was being remade. There was a petition with hundreds of thousands of names not to do so. I got actual hand-written death threats (the 1st in a long line).

It’s hard to be the target of the public’s ire when you’re famous. It’s worse when you’re barely known, which I was then. I was like, “Guys, I’m one of you! I love the movie!” But to most I was just “the Scooby-Doo guy.”

The low point for me was when the director Roger Avary tried to get the job directing & replace me rewriting, didn’t, & then called up folks at Ain’t It Cool News & told them how bad the script sucked. The drama got so bad we made Page Six in the New York Post (yes, in print).

Ain’t It Cool News was extraordinarily powerful back then - like imagine 90% of all fan sites combined into one. And studios were terrified of their negative assessment of something. And they led the war path.

They were so powerful that when the boss & main guy at AICN, Harry Knowles, who had been spearheading the anti-Dawn-remake fervor, himself read the script & said it was great, most of the turmoil died down & my life became normal again.

I was angry at Harry for the initial attacks but respected him for publicly changing his mind. All of this was before Zack was hired! There was still a lot of hate out there for us but that was pretty well squelched when the movie came out to good reviews & a public who loved it.