PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Walt Disney famously once said, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things…” Writer/director Steven LaMorte and producer Amy Schumacher are certainly adhering to those words with Screamboat, which brings Walt’s iconic 1928 cartoon starring Mickey Mouse in a fresh direction that’s simultaneously horrifying, hilarious and heartfelt.
The film takes place entirely on the Staten Island Ferry during its last run of the evening, when all hell breaks loose as crew members and passengers from varying walks of life are hunted by a merciless rat. Screamboat stars David Howard Thornton (Terrifier 2016) as Steamboat Willie, Schumacher (The Mean One 2016) as EMT Amber, Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf 2011) as Radio Operator Mike, Jesse Posey (Intermedium 2023) as Pete and Kailey Hyman (Terrifier 2 2022) as Cindi, who is leading her gaggle of Disney princess-inspired friends through a drunken birthday celebration.
PopHorror recently chatted with LaMorte and Schumacher, the dynamic duo behind The Mean One, who are thrilled to put a comedically scary twist on another children’s classic. They went in-depth about how Screamboat is a love letter to both Disney and LaMorte’s home state of New York, the decision behind making Thornton adorably Mickey-sized (and whether plushies are forthcoming), the familial aspect of independent filmmaking, city accents and more.
PopHorror: Steamboat Willie entered the public domain last January. Was the idea for this film something you had been wanting to do for a while prior, or did the idea come after the fact?
Steven LaMorte: We knew we wanted to make a follow-up to The Mean One with another childhood character that we wanted to adapt. So right after that idea started percolating, that we were gonna do a second film, Amy said, “Before you start looking for a character and shoehorning them into something where they don’t belong, is there a movie or an idea or a story that you’ve always wanted to tell? Why don’t you start there.”
And I said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to make a horror film on the Staten Island Ferry.” I’m from Staten Island, I’m from New York City originally, and I’ve taken the boat a million times. I’ve always thought, “This would be a great setting for a horror movie! I would love to do a horror flick in New York. I would love to get on the boat and trap people in 22 minutes of terror.” On the Orient Express, you can just get off. You can jump off the train, right? But with the boat, there’s just nowhere to go. The Staten Island Ferry is so big and scary — ours seats 3,000 people — that it’s plenty of room for mischief and mayhem.
And then once it became clear that Steamboat Willie was going to go into the public domain, we thought, “Well, this is perfect.” The Staten Island Ferry used to run on steam, he’s a character everybody knows and loves, and he would be the perfect little murderous, mischievous monster to run around and terrorize New Yorkers with the backdrop of New York City. So we started plotting and planning and marinating, and then on Jan. 1, 2024, the character fell into the public domain, the clouds parted and we went into prep to make this movie happen.
PopHorror: That’s awesome! Obviously you two worked together on The Mean One [read our interview with David Howard Thornton here], and I love how in this chunk of films — Terrifier, Stream and now Screamboat — there are so many familiar faces, from the creators to the actors. Can you speak to the familial aspect of these movies?
Amy Schumacher: Yeah! Well, [Steven] went to high school with the Fuzz on the Lens team, who made the Terrifier movies and Stream. And when you’re making a feature film, it’s so challenging and you spend so much time together, that we knew we wanted to work with people that A, we trusted, but B, we wanted to be around. So we have our team that we work with over and over again, the same people in LA, and they have their team in New York. And when we come together, if we’re having a good time, we know we’re making a good movie. So that’s a big part of it. You can trust to have each other’s back, and that’s why you see the same people. When we’re on set with the same actors, we want to give them more to do once we know as actors what their capabilities are. We can push even further and go even bigger, and so you’re just gonna keep seeing the same people again and again!
Steven LaMorte: And on top of that, you also have this thing where, I think once people get comfortable with each other and they know sort of each other’s strengths and limitations, then we can also support each other more. Like Amy said, I went to high school with Mike [Leavy] and Steve [Della Salla], the producers behind Terrifier. They’re the reason we have David for The Mean One. Terrifier 2 hadn’t come out yet and I said, “Hey, I’ve seen that Terrifier movie you guys did. We watched Terrifier and we were thinking of casting David in The Mean One. What do you think of David? Do you think he’d be good? We’re looking for this, that and the third.” And then Terrifier 2 came out and then The Mean One came out, and then they did Terrifier 3 and Stream, and so it’s just been really cool to build this weird little independent horror family.
We do a lot of things that are character- and IP-driven that rely on comedy and humor, and visual and special effects. They do a lot of things that are horrific and scary and viral and bloody, and so it’s been really cool to see those two things come together because now we have Screamboat, which is equal parts funny and gross. It’s scary, it’s thrilling, there’s a lot of in-camera awesomeness, there’s a lot of visual trickery. And it just comes from this amazing gumbo that we’ve made of all these cool collaborators from both sides of the country. Even though I’m from New York City, we live in LA now. So we went Hollywood, but we came back to New York to make this movie.
PopHorror: Nice! Going off of that, so I’m from Philly and New York is like my city away from home. I feel like so many scenes in Screamboat were such a love letter to New York. Can you talk about bringing that hometown pride to the screen? And was this actually filmed on the Staten Island Ferry?
Amy Schumacher: We did actually film on a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry, and we filmed on the actual running ferry a little bit as well and in the terminal. We did ride the ferry back and forth so many times. Once we knew we were gonna make this movie, we rode it back and forth with our eyes open to, “Who’s on the boat? What types of characters do you see? What are the one-liners you hear coming from the people that are on the boat? What is on the ferry that could be a weapon or a place that some mischief could happen?” Within the Staten Island Ferry, you notice so many more things when you’re thinking of it through the lens of, “We’re about to make a movie on this boat.” But I know [Steven] wanted to pay homage to [his] great city.
Steven LaMorte: Yes! And not just New York City, but also Staten Island. I feel like Staten Island gets a bad rep sometimes because it is kind of the forgotten borough, and we do have our funny accents. But it’s a Staten Island movie through and through. I think there is a certain side of New York that doesn’t get portrayed that often. A lot of people think of New York as Spiderman’s New York, or SVU New York or Guys and Dolls New York. People do this cartoony accent.
But the real beating heart of New York City is the Staten Island Ferry. It’s this mish-mosh group of people at the same time, they’re going to work or coming back from partying, construction workers, lawyers. You’ve got people who are working the boat. And I just think there’s something really cool about the melting pot that is New York City, and I really wanted the victims to not just be in New York, but I wanted it to be New York. So the Staten Island Ferry is very much a character, the crowd is a character, the vibe of who’s on the boat and how they’re gonna work together or work against each other — all of that is just a tribute to my hometown.
It was so much fun to come to New York to shoot that movie because, while we’re on a decommissioned ferry, a boat that I have ridden many times in my youth, it moved. Even when the boat was docked, a big freighter goes by and you can feel the whole boat shaking, even though we were on a dock. But then there’s also plenty of scenes that we shot at the ferry terminal or on the boat when it’s moving, and you can’t lock any of that stuff off.
So we’ll be filming at the terminal and with our Disney princess-inspired birthday brigade, and there’s people standing behind me at the monitor like, “That shot looks good!” And I’m like, “Who — is that just a guy going home? It’s like 3 o’clock in the morning, who is this guy standing behind me?” We were on the ferry shooting off the backside of the boat, we’ve got the cameras, we’ve got some lights. The ferry crew was there and they’re like, “Hey, what’s this thing called?” And I’m like, “You’ll see later!” But New York City was so accommodating and it was so awesome to shoot there. We didn’t want to just be there for a few days and have it be a thing that’s outside the window. We wanted it to be in the movie and I think we’ve accomplished that.
PopHorror: The character of Willie, I think he’s so stinking cute. With all of David’s characters, we’re used to seeing him as this 6-foot towering psychopath. Can you talk about the decision to actually make him Mickey Mouse-sized with the little Mickey noises?
Steven LaMorte: It was not a decision that was made lightly, I’ll tell you that!
Amy Schumacher: It was a decision that was made over many, many laps in our neighborhood talking about, “He has to be small. It’s gonna be hard to make him small,” and then designing the character and designing the look of the creature. And then a fun fact about those noises, we had told David, “You can’t say lines because Steamboat Willie doesn’t speak, he’s silent.” But David really organically found his Steamboat Willie noises. He did a lot of research in the character movements and things like that. And, of course, he can do the Mickey voice so well, but he’s not allowed to do it. So when he started to find his giggles and his whistle and all of that, David recorded all of that stuff, but some of it organically came as he was in the costume. Once he’s in the costume, the fur suit with the ears, he’s probably like 6’5″, 6’6.”
Steven LaMorte: Gigantic! The hat’s huge, he’s a big guy.
Amy Schumacher: Which was a really fun process because it also meant, when he’s holding something, it has to be scaled to be massive so that when we use the shrunken down size, it all matches. But yes, making him small was a fun challenge.
Steven LaMorte: It was. But we knew the only way for this to be funny was for him to be tiny. We’ve seen little killers before. We’ve seen Gremlins, we’ve seen Chucky, Leprechaun, and they all sort of have their charm, but they also have their limitations. So it was important to us that we both did a miniature mouse movie and that it was a guy in a suit, that it was a creature feature because the puppets do amazing things, but there’s also limits to puppets. There’s also limits to people with different body types. So we wanted to have someone who could really perform to the fullest potential of what our murder muppet could be, and that was David. Having him be furry and having him be small, he’s so cute.
He came on set the first day. We built the cast off of his face, I’d seen the designs, I approved them first, so we knew what was coming. But the first time we saw him, he walked through the door and he clomped around — he can’t help but walk with a jolly Willie walk — and he’s like, “OK Steve, what do you want me to do first?” And I’m like, “Dude, you’ve gotta give me a hug you big furball, you are so stinking cute!” He’s got claws and teeth and blood, and all you want to do is squeeze him and put him into a little plushie and throw him on your bed. It’s so funny. The crew starts lining up because they all want pictures with Willie. I’m like, “Guys, we have to go to work. We have to shoot, so I’m gonna have to start charging for these pictures or something.” Everyone wanted a picture with Willie.
The design, the performance, everything about him, I think, is what makes it funny and what sets it apart because Willie is not big. I mean, his scale is based off of that very famous statue of Walt Disney and Mickey, I think it’s called “Partners,” and that was where we started for our scale. That’s how true to the character we wanted it to be, not just to Willie, but the worlds and the references that we’re making. It was really important that we looked at every detail and brought him to life. Not an adaptation, not shoehorned in or just a slasher that anyone could’ve been in. No, it really is him. We really wanted to do that character justice. I think David does a great job and that’s why you just wanna hug him!
Amy Schumacher: He’s so good at emoting and being vulnerable and such a talented actor that, for me at least, you forget in moments that he’s a very dangerous character. This creature is very dangerous, but you’re like, “But he’s so cute, I feel so bad for him!” But you’re like, “Wait, no, he’s been doing terrible things for the last 85 minutes.”
Steven LaMorte: He’s been killing so many people! And also to the point of the sounds that he makes and his whistling, having him whistle to communicate is something my cowriter Matthew Dunn contributed. And choosing the song based on what the kill was gonna be, we went back and forth about what the songs would be. But something about having this unseen figure whistle or hearing him giggle off screen, especially when you’re in the theater and it sounds like Willie is behind you or you can hear his little footsteps running across the screen, when you’re listening to it in surround sounds, it really sounds like the mouse is over here, the mouse is over there. You don’t see him. Depending on what room you’re in, sometimes you hear him laugh and you’re scared, and sometimes you hear his little footsteps and it’s funny. Horror comedy, I think, creates a lot of fun opportunities, especially with the sounds and his performance.
PopHorror: You guys have to come out with Willie plushies now! People would so buy that.
Steven LaMorte: We’re working on it! People keep asking for a Willie plushie. I’m like, “Go see the movie and I promise we’ll make one, how about that?”
Amy Schumacher: We want one too.
PopHorror: Are you both Disney fans? Are you worried about any negative feedback from the people who take Disney really seriously?
Amy Schumacher: We are both huge Disney fans! That’s part of what we wanted to portray in this movie, is our love for Disney, honoring the IP. We grew up on the VHS classics of some of these movies, and seeing them in the movie and sprinkling them throughout is for the Disney fans. We want the Disney fans to come and feel like they have special information because they understood a reference, they caught a hidden Willie in the background, they saw something that’s just a little nuanced because they know the Disney worlds well.
So we are, I don’t know about worried, but we are aware that some Disney fans have a perception of what this might be, and that is us talking down on Disney or not liking it and wanting to make it a slap in the face. And it’s not that at all. So we would like to continue to spread the word of, “Come see it, you might actually like it a lot more than you think.” We’ve been showing it to huge horror fans, diehard horror fans, Terrifier fans, that sort of thing, and all of them come out and they’re like, “The Disney references! I loved the Disney references!” There are so many. So I hope that they give it a chance because I think there’s a lot for them here. We love Disney.
Steven LaMorte: I think there’s a preconceived notion that we don’t like Disney because we’ve taken this character and sort of turned it on its side, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. We absolutely love this character and it was important for us to do him justice. And it was really something, I think, sort of cool to be able to change people’s minds, have them see the film and realize, OK, if you don’t like Disney, there’s plenty here for you. There’s guts, there’s kills, there’s gore. It’s funny. But if you are a fan of Disney, there’s even a little bit more for you because you’re in the club and you’re able to get the references and see the in-jokes because this movie was made by Disney fans to Disney fans. It’s as much a love letter to that as it is New York.
I think there’s something really cool about taking a character, an idea that you have nostalgia for, something that you have love for like Mickey Mouse or Steamboat Willie, and saying, “There’s not really a lot of grown-up Mickey Mouse content out there.” But as an adult, I don’t really watch Mickey cartoons, we don’t have any kids, so we’re not on the Disney Channel. But then we are watching horror movies, and there’s something about taking this thing we love now and a thing we used to love and putting them together and saying, “You know, maybe I’m a bigger Mickey fan than I thought.” I think that’s what’s really cool is finding a thing that you’re shaking the dust off, taking it off the shelf, remembering what you loved about it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t going to make some new Disney adults out of just casual horror fans out of this film because he really is Steamboat Willie, and it’s just been really magical to see it come to life.
PopHorror: It’s so perfect for people who are both! I have my Mickey collection on one side of my apartment and Art the Clown on the other side. I also love how there’s a common theme with the characters in your films. In both The Mean One and Screamboat, there’s a method behind their madness. There’s heart to the character, there’s a reason why they’re doing all of these horrible things. Can you speak to that?
Amy Schumacher: We enjoy lighthearted movies more often than the dour type of movie. But storytelling is an important part of it for us, and we want to make sure there’s something to love about this character. There’s a reason why he’s doing what he’s doing is an important element in the stories we want to tell. And adding a little heart and humor is what we love to make within a movie. We want the audience to be able to come into a room, and separate life and enjoy and laugh and have a good time, but also feel some of the feels, which is a funny or interesting thing to feel when you’re at a horror movie, and I think there’s something really special about that.
Steven LaMorte: It’s important to us that, obviously it’s a horror movie, but we want it to make sense. We want our characters to act with logic unless they’re supposed to be illogical. We want our villain to have a plan. We want there to be rules and we stick to them. How strong is he? Where was he in the last scene and where would he be now? He’s not magic, he doesn’t just appear and disappear. But then also giving him a logical motivation where the film does have some rewatch, where as it’s going, you learn new things about Willie, whether it’s about his backstory or his motivation. And then you go back and you watch it again, and you’re like, “Oh, yes, the logic is sound. I get why he did blank, or I get why he did blank.” There’s something about that, whether it’s the conscious or subconscious, audiences really connect with a story that makes sense and a character who is not just a plot device. Willie is not a shark who just shows up and mindlessly eats. He’s a character. He has a motivation and a plan and an opinion about things, and watching that play out and having the audience follow along is part of what makes it a fun journey.
Amy Schumacher: I think it’s also really important, if we’re doing an IP movie, that there’s a reason why this idea is in this movie. You take out Steamboat Willie from Screamboat, the movie doesn’t exist. It’s not just Steamboat Willie was plopped into a movie that could be any type of slasher. It’s him. So with that, we knew that it was incredibly important to understand the backstory of the character and why he’s doing what he’s doing. And I hope we pulled that off. I think we pulled that off. But we talked about that a lot when we were creating this because Willie has to have a reason to have turned in this way, otherwise it doesn’t make sense and it could be anything. And then we’re not really paying homage to the original property.
Steven LaMorte: I have to ask since you said you’re in Philly, Kailey Hyman, she lives in Philly too, she’s channeling her inner Philly girl. How does her accent compare to your understanding of the way accents are in your neck of the woods?
PopHorror: I didn’t pick up on Philly, I felt like it was more New York!
Steven LaMorte: Oh, OK! She was going for Philly, but as long as it comes across as real, we’re fine. But what Jamie Root, who works on Terrifier and helped shoot our film, she’s also one of the second unit directors, she claims she does not have a Philly accent and sometimes we have to do something and some of the words fall out of her mouth and I’m like, “Kailey, do that! Jamie, say that again!” We wanted to make them authentic and it’s funny, even Jesse Posey, who plays Pete, would ask the crew to say his lines to him because he’s from California. I don’t know what the male equivalent of a Valley Girl is, but he’s that. He really got the accent down, but he would ask the guys like, “Mike, Steve, how do you say it again?” And we’re like, “Staaaten Island, the d is silent.” It was great having everyone just be willing to put in that work and lean into it. We do sound like cartoon characters, we do. I have worked very hard to put my accent aside, unless I’ve had a few beers, then it comes back out. Or if I’m around the guys and we start yelling at each other, you might hear some choice words.
Amy Schumacher: They were like, “We don’t have accents,” and I’m like, “OK, sure you don’t…”
Steven LaMorte: And it’s known too. We’ll go to other meetings and they’re like, “Oh, yes, you work with the New York guys, right?” And we’re like, “Yeah, they’re our partners, the Fuzz on the Lens.” And it’s like, “Those accents, huh?” And I’m like, “Yes, that’s right, people from Staten Island have accents, I certainly do not…” [laughs] But I’ll never forget where I’ve come from, and it was so important to me that I show this sort of loving, poking fun at being from Staten Island and New York, and we all have our quirks and it’s this sort of loving, curmudgeonly vibe that I wanted to capture. People are talking down on Staten Island the whole time, but then the Staten Islanders are like, “No, that’s our thing! We’re the ones who get to be proud that we’re from New York and everybody else can go kick rocks.” There’s just something about that that I really wanted to capture and connect with.”
Thanks for speaking with us, Steven and Amy! Screamboat is playing in theaters now.
