"Tales From Black Manor" - An Interview With the Filmmakers

TALES FROM BLACK MANOR, INTERVIEW WITH THE FILMMAKERS

And how they want to make a horror film set in the Harry Potter universe

Lexie: Hi! We’re Nick + Lexie, a directing duo! We’ve directed two feature films, a bunch of shorts, and more commercials than we care to remember. Most recently we directed the upcoming Tales from Black Manor, a fantasy horror series about a family that meets Death. 

Nick: We were really inspired, oddly enough, by the Harry Potter series. The idea started a few years ago but really cemented this last year. We have a six-year old daughter and when she turned five, we bought her the Harry Potter illustrated books by Jim Kay. 

Lexie: Those things are terrifying! 

Nick: We thought we were safe reading these to our daughter, but we were sooooo wrong. Not just the images of Voldemort, but the entire thing is just creepy. We started to think, wouldn’t it be great to actually make a horror film set in the Harry Potter universe???

Lexie: We’re big fans of horror. We’ve directed a few shorts and they always borderline fantasy. So this was sort of a natural thing for us. 

Nick: We started to talk about our inspirations. Creating a really scary version of a Bellatrix Lestrange film. Or a horror film set on Knockturn Alley. Why they haven’t made either of these or even just a Death Eaters film is kind of crazy! 

Lexie: But, since we don’t know JK, we had to start working on our project. The first thing we did to make it our own was we removed the wizards, the wands, and the magical schools. From there we needed to decide where our own dark magic would come from. 

Nick: We decided on this idea that there are 7 Books of Death and one of them has gone missing. The books belong to Death himself, and each book contains his secrets. 

Lexie: It was our daughter that started coming up with the opening lines. “Legend Has It…” 

Nick: She wanted it to be about some really scary stuff. If she grows up to be one of the greatest horror writers of all time I wouldn’t be surprised. 

Lexie: The idea then became that the book that went missing was given to a family member that lived at Black Manor. It's the secrets contained in the book that start to rip the family apart. 

Nick: This became the seed for Tales from Black Manor and we ended up writing about 3 generations of the family - and how Death follows them. 

Lexie: There was a fourth-generation about Vikings but that was too expensive. 

Nick: Vikings cost a lot of money… 

Lexie: The first Episode was released in August, the second in September and the third and Final Episode will be released in October. 

Tales from Black Manor, Official Site:

https://adventurecompany.org/black-manor