Rob Zombie’s ‘The Munsters’ Teaser Trailer Brings the Family Back to Life
Rob Zombie‘s upcoming feature film reboot of The Munsters is coming this Halloween, and the official teaser trailer was just released, revealing our first look at this reincarnation of the iconic family.
Confirming what we had always hoped, that the new movie will retain the family friendly tone of the original TV series, Zombie tells EW, “Yeah, it’s 100 percent in the spirit of the show. I didn’t want it to be different. I wanted to totally retain the vibe that it had in the ’60s.”
The brief teaser is a black and white recreation of the opening credits sequence from Season 2 of the show, until the end when the three leads are revealed in “living color.”
On his cast, Zombie says, “I wanted to cast people that had worked together a lot. I couldn’t risk getting on set in Budapest and going, my leads aren’t getting along, they have no chemistry. So that’s why I chose the cast I chose. Jeff Daniel Phillips and Sheri Moon Zombie and Daniel Roebuck, they work together a lot and I knew they would just fall right into it.”
The biggest difference of the film from the series that this new version will bring the Munsters into vibrant living color. Zombie explains, “I knew that if I went in and demanded ‘This movie’s going to be in black and white or forget it!’ we would not be talking about the Munsters right now, because it would have never happened. I guaran-f—ing-tee it. But what I did do is I made the colors sort of hyper-real. I noticed when the actors were in their makeup and they were just walking around, getting lunch or whatever, they looked like cartoon characters come to life. They were just so insanely colorful. I was like, I have to light the movie in the same fashion. It really seemed at all times like a live action cartoon, which was really exciting.”
Jeff Daniel Phillips plays Herman Munster, with Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster and Zombie regular Daniel Roebuck as The Count (Grandpa). Sylvester McCoy plays Igor (the name of Grandpa’s pet bat in the TV series), and horror icons Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira) and Dee Wallace have also joined the cast.
The film will also introduce new characters, including Richard Brake (31, 3 from Hell) as Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang, Catherine Schell (Space: 1999, The Return of the Pink Panther) as gypsy queen Zoya Krupp the gypsy queen, and Jorge Garcia (Lost) as Floop, described by Zombie as “Dr. Wolfgang’s hunchback assistant and Herman Munster’s best buddy.”
Pat Priest, who played Marilyn Munster in the second and final season of the original series, is also confirmed to be in the new movie, and while the original Eddie Munster, Butch Patrick, has not yet been officially announced, he is good friends with Zombie and expected to be returning, as well.
Zombie has recently revealed that legacy characters Uncle Gilbert and Zombo are also back.
The MPA has rated Rob Zombie’s The Munsters PG for “macabre and suggestive material, scary images, and language.”
The longtime front man of heavy metal pioneers White Zombie and later his own band since White Zombie’s breakup in 1998, Rob Zombie has previously directed the Firefly Family Trilogy – House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and 3 From Hell – as well as the 2007 Halloween remake and its 2009 sequel, in addition to The Lords of Salem, 31, and The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.
Zombie’s first massive hit as a solo artist was the 1998 song “Dragula,” inspired by the coffin-styled drag racer driven by the Munsters in the original TV series, which ran from 1964 to 1966 on CBS.
The Munsters will be released this fall by Universal 1440 Entertainment, a production arm of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group that develops and produces films for worldwide distribution across all non-theatrical platforms.
You can watch the official teaser trailer for Rob Zombie’s The Munsters and see a new photo, as well as our live breakdown and discussion of the teaser, below.
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