Anecdotes for
The Mist (2007)

photos

board

trailer

details

• This isn't William Sadler's first time with The Mist. He played David Drayton in an audio version of the story.
  
  
• To help save time on the tight schedule, the producers and director Frank Darabont hired the camera crew from "The Shield" (2002), to shoot the film. This camera crew is able to move fast, due to the hectic TV production schedule. There was an "A" and a "B" unit, which cut down on production time.
  
  
• In the opening shot of the film, David is painting in his room. The picture he's drawing is a design from Stephen King's Dark Tower series of the gunslinger Roland. Another design in the room is that of the poster of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). John Carpenter also wrote and directed The Fog (1980), which shares obvious themes with the Mist.
  
  

• Besides the Gunslinger illustration at the beginning of the film, The Mist shares another direct connection to the Dark Tower series of novels, written by Stephen King. This is the line "My life for you," spoken by Mrs. Carmody. This has been said by a number of villainous characters in the Dark Tower books, who had sworn allegiance to Walter o'Dim, one of the major antagonists. (Walter o'Dim made his first appearance in several earlier King novels, one the first being The Eyes of the Dragon, under the alias Randall Flagg, and the line is spoken there as well.) The Mist is one of the first short stories to refer to cross reference the Dark Tower. That same line, "My life for you," is used by Trashcan in The Stand movie as well as the book. This is also a reference made to Randall Flagg although in a different book.
  
  
• During an action scene in the film, a man runs into a wire rotating-book shelf in the grocery store. If you look carefully, you can clearly see that all the books on the shelf are written by Stephen King.
  
  
• When the group is in the next-door pharmacy, David (Thomas Jane) can be seen taking a comic book as promised for his son -- an issue of "Hellboy". Later in real life, Jane directed the comicbook movie The Dark Country (2008) which starred Ron Perlman, the star of the movie version of Hellboy (2004).
  
  
• Frank Darabont agreed to make the film with Dimension only under the condition that no matter what, they wouldn't change the scripted ending. They agreed.
  
  
• Director Frank Darabont originally wanted the film shown in black and white. The 2-disc DVD release contains Darabont's black and white version on the second disc.
  
  
• The pharmacy next to the Food House store is called "King's Pharmacy", most likely a reference to author Stephen King. Coincidentally, Stephen King himself once had a cameo as a pharmacist in the film adaptation of his novel Thinner (1996).
  
  
• The Dark Tower poster being worked on by David Drayton was actually painted by Drew Struzan, an artist famous for his movie posters. (Star Wars (1977), Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, The Thing (1982), Blade Runner (1982), etc.) All of the posters in the studio at the beginning of the film were painted by Drew Struzan, as was the film poster for this film.
  
  
• Despite the setting in Maine, the film was shot entirely in Minden, Louisiana. To Frank Darabont's delight, Stephen King could not distinguish it from Maine when watching the film.
  
  
• Thomas Jane sat in for a better part of the editing process, since he was interested to learn about it.
  
  
• When David grabs a comic from the rack in the pharmacy, you can clearly see an issue of "The Goon" towards the bottom. Eric Powell, the creator of this comic, is shown on the special features as a friend of Frank Darabont and crew for the day.
  
  
• Director Frank Darabont wanted to cast Stephen King in a supporting role, but King turned his offer down. The role eventually went to Brian Libby.
  
  
• In the pharmacy scene, when David Drayton is collecting a comic book for his son, Frank Darabont proposed to Thomas Jane that he should grab a copy "The Punisher: War Journal" since Jane played the Punisher three years earlier. Jane declined because he had a falling out with the producers of the Punisher franchise and decided not to return for the sequel. He instead grabs an issue of "HellBoy" as a shout out to friend Ron Perlman.
  
  
• Intially developed at Paramount.
  
  
• Shot in the six-week hiatus of "The Shield" (2002) with its cinematographer, two camera operators, their editor and the script supervisor, all of whom the director has worked with when he directed episodes of the show.
  
  

• SPOILER: According to Cinefex magazine, there is a favorite scene near the end of the book that was not in the script. In the scene, David Dreyton and the others with him in the vehicle, witness a giant, 6-legged behemoth walk over them. Darabont originally had excised this scene from his script. However, several of the people working with the special effects company CafeFX, convinced him to put it back into the film.
  
  
• SPOILER: WILHELM SCREAM: When Cornell dies.
  
  
• SPOILER: Frank Darabont originally wrote an opening scene showing the military scientist referenced to by Private Jessup accidentally opening the dimension portal that allows the creatures and the mist to enter our world. Over dinner, Andre Braugher questioned Darabont whether this scene was necessary. After thinking about it for a week, Darabont was convinced to scrap the scene, leaving the nature of the mist more ambiguous.
  
  
• SPOILER: Frank Darabont's "controversial" ending actually comes directly from Stephen King's source material. Written in first-person, David entertains this notion in his mind as a distant possibility, noting there are three bullets and four people (Dan Miller doesn't make it to the car in the novella), but he ends his journal and leaves it in a restaurant the survivors have sought refuge in before the car runs out of gas. Darabont felt this ending was too ambiguous and wrote the story to its finite climax, and ending that Darabont says in the DVD commentary was endorsed by King as the ending King wished he would have thought of.
  
  

Related Links