John Carpenter oversees remake of his horror classic

In the following interview, Carpenter talks about casting younger Hollywood stars for the remake (Tom Welling, Maggie Grace and Selma Blair), why he doesn't want to direct this film, and why it's time to remake his 1980's hit.

Question: Why remake "The Fog?"

John Carpenter: Why not? If everybody else is making remakes and they want to pay me money to make a remake of an old movie of mine, why not? It's a good idea. Seriously that's part of the answer, but my ex-partner, Debra Hill, who just recently died, had been trying to get this off the ground. We hooked up with David [Foster] here who did finally get it off the ground and it was kind of nice for her to see this being made.

Q: Can you talk about the key differences between this version of "The Fog" and the 1980 version?

Carpenter: The styles are different. The actors are different. The director is different. It's essentially the same story with some basic changes in it.

Q: Why did you decide to hand over this to another director instead of remaking it yourself?

Carpenter: It made more sense to let some young genius take over and make it better. In this case, it is Rupert Wainright, whose "Stigmata" was a real shocker.

Q: What's your role in this production?

Carpenter: I'm one of the producers. I go to the set and oversee it. I'd never spent much time on another director's set, so it was all new to me. It was actually quite interesting watching another director work. And there was a quality of déjà vu. I'd been here before but under different circumstances. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Q: The original didn't really skew younger the way the new version does. What do you think has changed in the world of horror since the original came out?

Carpenter: It's a different era. That was 1979. I mean it's just a whole different time now. We didn't have the Internet. Thank God we didn't have computer-generated graphics and the whole celebrity showbiz thing was different. It was a different time. Horror movie and science fiction used to be portrayed with older folks. A little more mature I should say.

Now, we hired a lot of young actors, which was a very specific plan. Tom Welling is really popular with the young people because of "Smallville." "Lost" where Maggie Grace stars is a very popular series with all kinds of people. And then there's Selma Blair who's also young, and sort of glued to the young people. It was a very calculated thing. Horror movies now fail or succeed based on young people going to the movies and mostly young girls. It's amazing.