The Mist

Frank Darabont read Stephen King’s novella in the 1980 anthology Dark Forces and wanted to film it for years, but The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile came first. Three budgets sat in front of him. Paramount offered sixty million, another producer forty million on condition the ending be softened. Darabont walked away from the forty; Bob Weinstein greenlit it. King had told him to take the pay cut, citing the genre’s tradition of restrained resources. Filming began in February 2007 at StageWorks of Louisiana in Shreveport. Wanting a fluid, ragged documentary look, Darabont brought in the camera crew from the series The Shield, skipped digital and shot on 400 ASA Fujifilm so it would not look too beautiful. A black and white version exists too: he wanted the film that way from the start, producers refused, and he put his own cut on the DVD and Blu-ray special editions. King liked the ending, calling it nihilistic and anti-Hollywood. Marcia Gay Harden won Best Supporting Actress at the 34th Saturn Awards, where Darabont was nominated for directing and the film for best horror, losing to Sweeney Todd. A good fit if you would rather watch a congregation assemble inside a grocery store than the creatures. Not for anyone shopping for a softened version; no such cut was ever made.