With their extremely lucrative collaboration on the SCREAM films, it was thought by many to be a sure thing when director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson united again for CURSED (read JoBlo’s review here). This sentiment was quickly proved wrong early in the shoot, when production problems arose and script issues became painfully apparent. Production was eventually halted completely as Williamson opted for a complete re-write of the problematic script. Craven eventually re-shot most of the film with a radically altered storyline and cast. Was it all worth it? We’ll find out on Monday when the box office numbers are in.

The CURSED “junket” last week consisted of one interview: stars Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Ricci. To their credit, they were pretty candid about the problems that CURSED faced. Here are some excerpts from their interview.

What was it like working with Wes Craven?

Christina Ricci (CR): He’s great. I mean, he’s Wes Craven. He’s incredibly experienced and this is like his thing and what he does best, and he’s just very laid back and smart and sarcastic and dry. He doesn’t let anything really upset him too much. We’re there to make a movie, but it’s going to be fun.

Jesse Eisenberg (JE): I think also because he’s been doing it so long and has such a command of the genre that everybody on the set has a great amount of respect for him and patience, not that he takes a long time, but there’s a general understanding that the outcome is going to be that much better, or there’s a general understanding that the outcome, there’s a confidence that what we were doing was worthwhile.

We know that Wes re-shot much of the film. How did the story change?

CR: It changed quite a bit. We weren’t related in the original version. We just both happened to be involved in this crash, and then when we came back we were brother and sister, and Josh wasn’t in the original one. He wasn’t. No, and there was no club that anybody was opening.

JE: No. There was a wax museum. They were able to keep some of the great effects, but the story, I think, is improved, but I mean I think the final product is now better, but I think they were able to keep some of the great effects or some of the more expensive things that still fit into the story.

At the time, did you agree with the decision to re-shoot the movie?

CR: Well, we weren’t seeing dailies, and I think it was everyone who was watching the dailies that they were the ones who could see that it wasn’t really working. When you’re not seeing what’s actually on camera, sometimes it’s hard… I mean, the final product of any movie usually feels like a totally alien thing than what you’ve been shooting anyway, so we wouldn’t really be able to have that perspective or the objectivity to know that it wasn’t really going quite right.

When did you begin shooting the film?

CR: Oh a year, two years ago. Yeah, it will be two years this March.

How difficult was it to maintain continuity for your performance when there was a possibility that footage from both versions might be used?

JE: Very little of it was kept, so there wasn’t really…

Thanks so much to the amazing Riikka for sending in high quality caps of Christina on “Joey” and on the “Daily Show”. And thanks to Nikki for sending us 4 caps of Christina on “Total Request Live”. Click on a thumbnails below to be taken each album.

Christina said on her appearance in The Daily Show that I Love Your Work has finally gotten a distributor and it will be seen in theaters this spring! I really can’t wait and I know that so many of you have been waiting to see this Christina/Adam Goldberg collaboration for so long too.

You may also want to read a new interview with her and Jesse Eisenberg over at JoBlo.com. Christina talks a lot about her upcoming projects, Monster, and more. She speaks about The White Rose and judging from what Ricci says, it sounds like they have an all new plot for it (I guess because another Sophie Scholl film was just released with Franka Potente on the lead). “That’s a project that’s just still in the early stages of development. It’s based on a graphic novel. It’s sort of a young girl who’s taken under the wing of a cat burglar, and then she’s raised to be a cat burglar and her signature is a white rose. And then something goes wrong and then there’s a movie.” Christina also said that the experience with Prozac Nation was very disappointing to her…

Read the interview for this and much more!

You can visit photos from the TRL event we all missed at Wireimage.

I have spent all evening working on these caps for you guys. 😉 There are captures from Christina’s appearance on Conan O’Brien, The Early Show and The View now up in the gallery.

Christina was on MTV’s Total Request Live today. Sorry for not informing anybody, but I missed it as well. :crying: If anyone has captures from the show, please feel free to send them in! Caps from all other Christina appearances are being worked on and added tonight. 😉

Christina’s movie Prozac Nation will finally be available for people in the US to see. According to the February 25, 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, they say the film will debut on the cable channel “Starz” starting in March. And Miramax plans to release the film on DVD “eventually”.