The Cabin in the Woods

Whedon Has Cabin Fever

Joss Whedon, who is producing the upcoming horror movie The Cabin in the Woods, was coy with SCI FI Wire about the film’s top-secret plot, except to say "bad things might happen to teenagers during the film."

Whedon’s former Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer Drew Goddard, who penned this year’s hit Cloverfield, is co-writing Cabin with Whedon and makes his directorial debut with it. MGM gave a green light to the film’s production based on Whedon and Goddard’s spec script.

"All I can say about Cabin in the Woods is that it’s a movie, um, and that it’s a horror movie, and that it’s the kind of horror movie that you would expect from me and Drew Goddard if somebody put us in the same room," Whedon said slyly in an interview. "Which nobody ever should."

Whedon wouldn’t answer if the film would feature any familiar creatures, such as vampires or werewolves. "I am not going to tell you what there is," he said. "I will tell you, it’s not good."

Whedon is happy that the film has a go-ahead. "Well, we sold it, [and] we had a green light, which is a rare thing, but that was our condition," he said. "It wasn’t [about the] big payday. It was the green light. So we’re ready to go, and we should start filming within the next six months, hopefully. We need to do a lot of preproduction, and it’s Drew’s first movie, so we’re making sure he gets the prep time ... as a director. ... And, quite frankly, [it’s my first movie] as a producer, so we’re giving ourselves the prep time to do it right. But, you know, you should be looking for it a lot sooner than usually happens after a sale."

Whedon plans to shoot the movie in and around Los Angeles, which will allow him to supervise his upcoming Fox SF TV series Dollhouse, which is gearing up to shoot 13 episodes. (That show debuts in early 2009.)

"[We] will be shooting parts of [Cabin] elsewhere, but most of it we’ll be shooting in Los Angeles so that I can do double duty," Whedon said.