It’s hard to come by an original idea in Hollywood these days. It’s not for lack of them, but a reluctance to invest in telling a story that hasn’t been vetted as an established IP or through social media numbers. Over the past few days, we have spoken with the two stars of the new, original thriller Bad Samaritan, out in theaters now. The film stars David Tennant as a maniacal killer hiding in plain sight and Robert Sheehan as the small-time thief that discovers him.

Today we speak with director Dean Devlin on pushing to get an original, untested, unfocus-grouped, non-merchandise-friendly film made today. You might know him from bigger movies like Independence Day, Geostorm, or shows on TV like The Librarians and Leverage. Here though, Devlin goes for a tightly-wound cat and mouse thriller with a horror tinge and the results are a hell of a lot of fun.

We arrived at the room for the interview inside a West Hollywood hotel. There was a light breeze coming in through the open sliding glass door leading to a sun-drenched deck. Devlin, hospitably asks if I needed anything to drink and we sit down to chat.

HorrorBuzz: You have said that this was your dream cast. What was it about each of the stars that were so perfect?

Dean Devlin: Well, aside from what was so good about each of them individualistically for the role, and I will get to that in a minute, the most important thing was their skill level. I started off as an actor. Actually, I started off as Al Pacino’s chauffeur, so one of my first jobs was with one of the greatest actors that ever lived (laughs). So I care about performance. But we live in a time where more and more you have discussions about talent and all you are talking about are twitter followers and sex tapes on the internet, things that are completely irrelevant to performance and acting. That’s why I did this film independently. I wanted to hire the best damned actors I could find that would be willing to work with a schmuck like me and make this movie. I wanted to work with Tennant on my last several pictures but I had movie studios telling me, “He’s not a movie star.”  I was thinking, “Are you insane?” I mean, I have done big movies with big stars and this is the ONLY movie where 30-40 people every day were standing outside my set trying to catch a glimpse of my actor walking from his trailer to set. And this is in the bitter cold, with 5 snow storms. So he has a following. But even if he didn’t just the wealth of talent that he has is amazing.

Then there is Robert. I have been. a fan of Robbie’s since Misfits and I have been desperate to work with him. I wrote a small part for him on my previous film, and when I got to work with him it was like, “Okay, this guy isn’t just an interesting personality. This guy is gifted!” So I just knew that in a film like this it was all about the characters. I wanted complex characters, interesting characters, ones that you wouldn’t see in a studio, and I knew how easy it would be to screw these characters up. So I went after both of them hard and luckily, (laughs) I have polaroids on both of them that I threatened to expose.

HB: (Laughs) That’s the short answer. The only way to get them to work with you…

DD: Blackmail. The only way to get them to work with me was blackmail.

HB: If your dream cast came from the 1970’s who would you use?

DD: Oh well, I mean, Anthony Perkins was the guy that started this kind of role. Maybe in the 70’s it would have been Jack Nicholson.

HB: Yeah! I can totally see that. Who would have played the Sean character?

DD: Oh, Richard Dreyfus! Remember young Jaws, Richard Dreyfus? That was a time when we cared about acting. When it was all about really good actors. Have you noticed that a lot of our movie stars today are non-Americans? We are not raising actors to be actors anymore. We are raising them to be celebrities. SO you have to go to other countries where they actually care about craft.

HB: I am sure everyone is asking you what the difference between working on a big budget movie as opposed to a smaller one…

DD: You know, it’s not about the money. It’s between Studio and Independent. That’s the difference.

HB: Are there similarities?

DD: All filmmaking is hard. My dad was a movie producer. He used to tell me, Dean you make a 100 million dollar movie, you make a 1 million dollar movie, you’re gonna kill yourself on both of them. You are gonna make more money on the 100 million dollar movie though (laughs). The truth is to me though that the atmosphere at studios has changed dramatically. I mean, look at how many directors have been fired off of movies and replaced. It didn’t use to be like that.

HB: It’s about brand?

DD: It’s about brand, it’s about Twitter followers, it’s about IP, and it’s less and less about filmmaking. I’m not saying all of them suck because a lot of them are quite good. Some of them are really good, but I think that it’s bad for our business. I think as a business you need a lot of items on the menu. Studios have decided that they are only doing 1 million dollar found-footage movies or 200 million blockbusters.

HB: Or the Blumhouse model where you make 10 micro-budget films and…

DD: Yeah, and one of them is a hit. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing wrong with the blockbuster. As an audience member, as a fanboy, I like those items. I want to have more movies like Baby Driver. There used to be a lot of movies like that to go see, but the studios have given up on them. So I am hoping that companies like mine, and Entertainment Studios, and STX, I’m hoping that we are gonna be like what music labels were in the 80’s. We’re gonna do the things to revitalize our business that the studios aren’t doing. I mean, all you gotta do is look at ticket sales. We’ve been on a steady decline in ticket sales over the past couple of years.

HB: Yeah, but a lot of that has to do with everything being so immediately available.

DD: No, but I don’t think that’s it. I think that if you constantly make movies that are based on something else, eventually it’s like kissing your sister. With the philosophy in moviemaking today, they would not make E.T. They would not make Indiana Jones. I tell you if we walked into a movie studio today with the script to Star Wars, they would look at us and ask, “How do we know anyone’s gonna see it? What’s the pre-existing audience? What’s the graphic novel this was based on?” This eliminates a lot of fresh ideas and reasons that it’s exciting to go to the movies. Yes, it’s exciting to go see The Avengers because you are invested in that universe and you want to see the next chapter of it, but to me, it’s a different thing when it was E.T. coming out. It was a new thing and you didn’t know what it was going to do.

HB: How much did that movie gross, like 500 million ($792,910,554)? That one was made for only 11 million. Even still at today’s numbers that is about 36 million.

DD: Yeah, Speilberg’s little movie. I had this discussion with a studio head a few years ago and I said to them, “With this mentality, you wouldn’t have made Independence Day today.” and he said, “No I wouldn’t unless you called it War of the Worlds part 2” It’s just insanity.

HB: What was it like selling Independence Day back then?

DD: Well it was totally different back then. You have to remember that was over 20 years ago. We spec’d the script for Independence Day. So when we put it out we had 9 studios and all of them wanted it. When we closed a deal, we had creative control of the movie and control of the marketing which is unheard of! Today there aren’t 9 there are 5. and if this newest merger goes through you’ll be down to 4. So it’s a very different time.

In a weird way, when I was growing up there were 4 T.V. networks. Back then if you lost even a small percentage of your audience that was huge for a company. So, you had shows that didn’t want to upset anybody, it was all formulaic, and you had a lot of voices on a T.V. show. When movies faced a similar problem, after Cleopatra, the studios thought the business would collapse. Then they took a chance on these crazy guys and they made Easy Rider. and Raging Bull and The Sting, and The Godfather, well now, Timecut: Movies are so expensive to make and to market now everybody’s got a voice in it because they want their piece of the pie. Now you have a guy in marketing from Brazil commenting on where your scene should take place and a video guy in eastern Europe gets a say in what actor you hire. Conversely, on T.V. there are now 500 channels and the only way to have a voice is to do something really interesting. So now we’ve got the most creative things happening there.

HB: Do you prefer working in T.V.?

DD: In many ways I do. I mean let’s put it this way. I will never be back at the studios. If what I am doing now with Electric Entertainment works then great. If not, then I will happily make T.V. for the rest of my life or at least for as long as it stays as interesting and provocative as it is now.

HB: What’s the one word you would use to describe making Bad Samaritan?

DD: Passion. Everybody who worked on this thing, I like to say they are evangelists and not mercenaries. Everybody cared. For no one was it a career move, for no one was it a paycheck. We were all excited about the project and about working together and you could feel that every single day.

HB: What are your top 5 horror films?

DD: Hmm, well I am an old school horror guy. But recently I loved Get Out. Not only was it well made, it touched on a social issue at exactly the right time so it really affected me. I was really affected by early Brain De Palma movies whether it was Dressed to Kill or Carrie, I love Rosemary’s Baby. The thing is about horror, Jordan Peele said, “There is a role in our society for scary movies. Scary Movies allow us to face our fears in a dark room filled with strangers and we go through this together and when it’s over it’s a catharsis.” It’s really something that’s vital to our society.

We talked about the rise of Netflix and all that, there are movies that you can enjoy at home, but it is much better in a theater. Horror movies, there is a moment where you scream, but it’s not that. It’s the moment after, the embarrassed giggle. That’s the communal moment, that’s what binds us together, and that’s what is very special.

HB: What scares you?

DD: There’s been a lot of scary movies in the last several years, but what really scares me is the horror amongst us. The psychopaths that have no capacity for sympathy or guilt. When you mary that with money and power, these are truly terrifying people.

Directed by Dean Devlin (writer of INDEPENDENCE DAY, executive producer of “The Librarians,” and so much more), BAD SAMARITAN gives you something new to be anxious about – what could happen when you valet your car with valet drivers who are less than honest? Featuring David Tennant who plays an amazing bad guy and new-comer Robert Sheehan (who also stars in Peter Jackson’s MORTAL ENGINES out later this year), The film comes out May 4th and we are eager to share our review with you on Friday. Unti then, check out the trailer below.