Boogeyman horror director Rob Savage has said Disney has banned him from showing a toy version of the Star Wars lightsaber in the film. The horror movie is based on a story by Stephen King.
In The Boogeyman, sisters Sadie and Sawyer Harper, played by Sophie Thatcher and Vivienne Lyra Blair, discover that a closet monster lives in their house. Sawyer at some point in the night will see the creature with the help of a ball of light – the girl’s night lamp.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rob Savage admitted that Sawyer’s night light was originally supposed to be a toy lightsaber. Curiously, Vivienne Lyra Blair played the young Princess Leia Organa in the TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which Savage did not know about at the time of the casting. Disney asked Savage to replace the sword with another prop, so the funny Star Wars reference didn’t happen:
“In the original script, she had a toy lightsaber instead of a moon orb that she kept next to her in bed. This is what I slept with as a kid. The idea was that the fake lightsaber would begin to fail when the creature was near, and it would eventually shatter. And Disney didn’t want the movie to have a young Princess Leia with a lousy replica lightsaber, so they said no.”
After Disney’s refusal, the film crew began to look for a new children’s toy that glows. The team ended up acquiring several balls. Inside each ball, light sources were installed that can be controlled. The authors had to rewrite the night light scenes. However, Savage is even glad that this happened, since the episodes with the ball became one of the scariest in the film:
“We found this moon ball, which we thought turned out to be a great prop. We rewrote the scenes and they ended up being some of the scariest and best in the movie. This is usually for the best.”
The cast of the tape also included Chris Messina and David Dastmalchyan.
The world premiere of the film “Bogeyman” is scheduled for June 2.