The Blackening's Tim Story On Casting His Horror Comedy & Considering Kevin Hart For A Role [Exclusive Interview]

Tim Story has had quite a varied career, directing everything from 2005's "Fantastic Four" to the live-action/animated hybrid "Tom & Jerry" movie. But if the man is known for anything, it's comedy, with "Barbershop" serving as his feature directorial debut. He also has "Ride Along" under his belt, as well as a few very successful Kevin Hart stand-up specials. Now, Story is back with a brand new horror/comedy in the form of "The Blackening," which is based on Dewyane Perkins' short of the same name from 2018.

The timing of it feels perfect, as horror has been booming at the box office right now, with movies like "Smile" and "M3GAN" becoming gigantic hits. It also features a (nearly) all-Black cast, offering audiences something different within the genre space. The film centers around a group of Black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway, only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer who makes them play games for a chance to survive.

In honor of the movie's release, I had the good fortune of speaking with Story about the film. We discussed how this is the culmination of years of work, how he was originally only supposed to be a producer on it, the origin of one of the best gags in the film, what's going on with his "Monopoly" movie, and much more.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

There is a gag in this movie that made me laugh harder than anything in a long time. It's just a small moment, but I think it's in the trailer, so I think I can talk about it. There's a moment where someone holds a gun sideways and then another character flips it up correctly, and it just destroyed. Was that in the script? Was that improvised? How did that happen? That was magical.

That is Jermaine Fowler. I have to give that one to Jermaine Fowler. The situation was obviously in the script. I'm not sure to this day, I don't know whether he told Sinqua [Walls] what he was going to do. I don't believe he did. Once he did that, and I think we were kind of joking on set about how when Sinqua went to go shoot, how it's a cultural thing that you always want to shoot a gun sideways, which is about the worst way to shoot a gun. When he did that on set, we all laughed, and we just knew we had something. Those kind of little moments that, like you said, it's so little, but if you get it, it really does make you laugh out loud.

More broadly, I think horror is having a bit of a moment right now. Was this movie in development before this horror boom? Or was this movie sort of a result of, "Okay, there's this horror gold rush right now. We see the opportunity"? How did this come about?

Yeah, it's weird to say this, this has almost been four years in the making. Dewayne Perkins created this short that went viral. I want to say it was 2018, if I'm not mistaken. And [co-writer] Tracy [Oliver] found him and said, "Look, I think we can make this idea into a feature." And luckily, he agreed. It took them another year-ish to find the script. Then we ended up finally getting the script. I was a producer on it at the time, but read it and said, "Wow, this is really great."

I thought the script was brilliant, and just hilarious, and just so smart. So I kind of raised my hand and said, "What if I came on as a director?" Even though, at the time, I was just supposed to be producing. We ended up making it. Literally, we look up and it's been really four years in the making. It was around before the boom. Now we're kind of finding a really good moment where, like you said, horror is having this moment right now. I think when you can put comedy inside of it as well, I think you kind of have an experience that could be pretty cool.

Oh, for sure. And you're talking about two genres where comedy and horror are both arguably the hardest to pull off individually, then having to do both at the same time. But this movie does truly nail it. There is a lot of genuine horror in it. One of the things, your killer in this movie uses a crossbow. Jason's got his machete. Michael's got his kitchen knife. Leatherface has his chainsaw. How'd you guys arrive at a crossbow?

Yeah, I'm going to try to represent the writers as best as I can. I think one of the main ideas in figuring out what the killer was going to use is one, to be perfectly honest, we didn't want to make something that killed too quickly. We wanted to be a little bit torturous where it could, if he got you, he might put a few in you, which I know sounds a little crazy. But we wanted to be able to extend some of the kill moments. We didn't want to be too gory because although we were making kind of our version of a slasher movie, we didn't want that to overpower the film in terms of the gore of it all.

Once you get into other things like axes or machetes or this and that, once somebody hit you with one of those, there's only one way to go. I don't want to give much away, but we knew where we were going and we knew that this weapon would be the best for us having a lot of fun. But at the same time, still pretty horrifying, which is in the trailer when you see these moments happening, for somebody to be chasing you and shooting things at you, it would be pretty terrifying. So it was definitely a choice, something that would allow us to have a lot of fun and extended moments throughout the film.

It's almost primarily an entirely Black cast, but you have Diedrich Bader. How did you arrive at him as the one white guy for most of the movie? Because when I saw him pop up, I was like, "Of course, perfect."

We were looking for an actor that could understand what we were doing. I'm a big fan of "Veep." It was one of those situations where his name came up and I went, "Oh my God, he'd be perfect." I kind of believe he was the first person we called and actually kind of went out to him. We sent him the script, and he saw what we saw. When he came on set, he just got it. He got what we were doing. He was so smart about it. I mean, one thing that I just continuously am impressed about comedians or comedic actors, is just the intelligence which they bring about comedy. Once again, he just didn't let us down. He was just so great to be around. We learned some things from him. But the greatest thing about it, as I said before, is he got what we were doing, and he just merged well into this team of filmmakers.

Do you mind if I ask you one thing, a little off-topic real quick?

Sure.

So you have collaborated with Kevin Hart quite a few times. I didn't realize you were attached to that "Monopoly" movie that they were trying to make. Is that still happening?

It's still in development. It's a difficult one to find the right thing with. So we have been talking to writers, it is still being developed, and hopefully we'll get to a blueprint that we can kind of get something made.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Because, more than anything, I'm more curious, what does that look like as a cinematic story?

Trust me, I wish I could tell you. That's been our problem. Really, it's one of those ideas that you can go so many different places with it. Then of course with money, finance movies are not easy to make entertaining. So there's a lot going on here and the ball keeps being moved, or I should say the basket keeps being moved. So fingers crossed, hopefully. Trust me, one day I hope I can articulate exactly what it might be.

Speaking of Kevin. Jay Pharoah is in this, and I don't want to give too much away about his role, but it struck me that could have been ... I imagine there were a lot of people considered, but did you actually at all consider Kevin in the movie? Did you talk to him about being in this?

I consider Kevin on everything. Are you kidding?

Right.

At the end of the day, we looked for who might be the best in the role. And I had done a television show with Jay and just knew how talented he was. And luckily he said yes and came on down and did us a solid. As you know, once again, don't want to give it away, but we kind of used his status to help us in the story we're making. But yeah, look, there's a lot of friends out there that I continue to look forward to do other projects with and hopefully I'm able to do a lot more.

"The Blackening" hits theaters on June 16, 2023.