Video:Marti Noxon on I Am Number Four, Fright Night, and Buffy

Transcript:Marti Noxon on I Am Number Four, Fright Night, and Buffy

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the World Premiere of DreamWorks Pictures' I Am Number Four.

I Am Number Four Screenwriter Marti Noxon

This must have been a really difficult book to bring to the screen because you had to leave out some parts of it that some readers of the book are going to go, "Wait a minute - they never go to the other planet."

Marti Noxon: "They never go to the other planet and there's other parts that we don't do. But there's only however many minutes on the screen and we wanted to make sure that there's a really strong character through-line and so we simplified a little bit. But some of the elements from the first book will certainly show up in, if there are more..."

There should be more...

Marti Noxon: "I hope so."

Because it sets it up for more and there will be more books. When you're writing the script did you keep in mind what you could push to the second film?

Marti Noxon: "Sure. I mean it was a constant kind of back and forth as we were finishing up the script to try and figure out exactly what had to stay there in order to set up the next book and what we could parse out over time."

And you didn't work with the other two writers. You picked up the script from what they had done?

Marti Noxon: "There was actually an interim draft. There were three different people on the project. There was [Miles] Millar and [Alfred] Gough, then there was an unnamed person in the middle, and then there's me at the end. And we all did a bunch of work on it."

How different was your draft from what you picked up?

Marti Noxon: "I mean, structurally and in terms of a lot of the character choices, it's not terribly different. But a lot of the character dialogue... A lot of it is different too. A lot of it is different. The essence of the movie is the same, but a lot of the words are different."

I have to tell you that to me Buffy is the perfect television show and nothing will ever live up to that.

Marti Noxon: "Something? Not Friday Night Lights?"


No. I'm sorry, Buffy was perfect. Now they're going to do a Buffy remake of the movie. How do you feel about that?

Marti Noxon: "I'm glad that I'm not writing it."

Really?

Marti Noxon: "Oh yeah. I would never want to try to. I would never want to step into those shoes, no way. I'm such an admirer of Joss [Whedon's] and if anybody's going to do it, for me it should be him. And if it's not, I'm just glad it's not [me]. You know what I mean? I'm just really glad that I'm not the one who's going to take those hits."

And Fright Night, I love the original - how does this new one compare to that one?

Marti Noxon: "I think it's very faithful to the original in terms of it sort of takes that idea and runs with it in a new direction. But a lot of the moments from the original film that I think people loved and would like to see again are in there."

Same tone?

Marti Noxon: "No, tonally it's quite different actually. Tonally it's much scarier."

It's not a campy Fright Night.

Marti Noxon: "It has a lot of comedy but it's much more realistic and grounded. Yeah."

I like the cast.

Marti Noxon: "The cast is amazing. And I think that if you look at the cast, it reflects sort of the tone of the movie. It's kind of real and we really wanted to say, 'If this were happening, what would it seem like? What would it feel like?' I'd say in terms of what is it closer to, in some ways it's closer to Fright Night meets Disturbia in tone."

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I Am Number Four Trailers, Clips, Posters and Cast List