First Kill Director William Brent Bell On Bringing Esther Back For A New Era [Interview]

I love the original “Orphan.” I re-watch it every year around Halloween, and I never once thought, “Oh, there’s going to be a sequel to this or a prequel to this,” especially after all these years. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how this even came about all these years later — why we’re getting a new “Orphan” movie now.

I never thought [there would be a sequel] either, as a fan of the movie. I watched it all the time […] [A]bout three years ago or so that they gave me the script. And I think it was about a year before that I watched it and I found myself taking notes on the movie, which I’ll do sometimes when I just get inspired to take notes on a film, but I never thought, “Boy, they need to make another one.”

I mean, it never crossed my mind either, I think because Isabel [was] a child [when they made the first film], it just became an assumption. I think even Warner Brothers eventually gave the rights to Dark Castle because they didn’t really see a path forward with the movie, but they got the rights back and they wrote the script. And when they gave it to me, I was like, “Well, as a fan, I’m excited to read another ‘Orphan’ movie,” but I was like, the first movie is so great and it had such a great twist. And then Isabelle Fuhrman is that character. So it’s like, it’s going to be interesting to read it, but I doubt it’s going to be something that resonates with me. And I loved the script and I love what they did with the concept of it and the tone of it.

And so then it became like, “Okay, well, what do we do about Esther?” How can we solve this? Because she’s so uniquely her, which ultimately led to her being in the movie. So like you, it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. But after I read that script, I was like, “Wow, this is a really good movie. How do we do it?”