After much back-and-forth, Warner Bros. Discovery is releasing “House Party” into theaters nationwide. This charmingly offbeat remake (of sorts) of the 1990 original was directed by music video whiz Calmatic and written by Jamal Olori and Stephen Glover, both veterans of FX’s beloved series “Atlanta.”
And while the film eventually starred Tosin Cole and Jacob Latimore, as a couple of knuckleheads who decide to throw a house party at LeBron James’ house (while he’s away reaching spiritual enlightenment), the movie almost took a very different turn.
When discussing the film with TheWrap, they said that, much like the original film was built as a vehicle for hip hop duo Kid ‘n Play, the “House Party” remake was once built around a different pairing. “The original thing that they came to us with was, perhaps they were going to have LeBron and Drake play Kid ‘n Play, basically, and have a party at a house,” Glover said. “I don’t know how that was going to make sense. I guess it was supposed to be like ’21 Jump Street?’ I don’t know.”
“We thought it was stupid,” Olori said.
“But I remember, when I first came on, they were open to anything. I wasn’t super into the idea of remaking ‘House Party.’ But then I was like, ‘Man, maybe we just do like something completely new.’ And I remember us both coming from a background of party promoting back in the day,” Glover said.
“I remember thinking, What if it was about throwing a party in LeBron’s house? And it just went from there, this idea of what would it take to make you feel like you needed to do that? And what would it take to pull this off? Anybody who’s ever thrown a house party, the main thing is like trying not to either get caught by your parents or destroy this house or some sort of outside presence trying to stop you, whether it’s the police or not. It was just about raising the stakes of like throwing it in someone’s house. And then we just thought was funny.”
Of course, throwing a house party can be difficult and the road to “House Party’s” eventual release proved fraught. The movie was originally intended as part of an ambitious slate of original HBO Max movies that also included several new films from Steven Soderbergh and a number of projects based on DC characters. And then AT&T sold off Warner Bros., merging it with Discovery and installing Discovery’s notoriously wallet-conscious CEO David Zaslav at the head of the new mega-company.
“I saw on Twitter, the ‘Batgirl’ stuff came out and I saw that their movie was being shelved. I was like, I wonder how I would feel if that happened,” Glover said, referring to the nearly-completed, $90 million “Batgirl” movie that Warner Bros. Discovery canceled for tax reasons.
“And then a day later…,” Olori said.
“And then they said that our movie had been shelved. Now I know! Luckily, it came back. It’s been five crazy years,” Glover said. “I learned a lot about the movie business. And it’s basically the way it works now. And the word I keep thinking of, it’s like, I’m grateful more than anything, because I’m seeing how hard it is to get a movie to actually cross all these hurdles. And for it to be our first movie and also we also got sole credit on it. It’s pretty crazy.”
As to how they got over those hurdles, they give all the props to LeBron James and his production company SpringHill.
“LeBron being in the movie and his production company spearheading the whole thing,” Olori explained when we asked how the movie finally came out. “I know Maverick [Carter, co-founder of Springhill] definitely got into with Warner Bros. and some people. They definitely had a large say and involvement. I think also LeBron being in the movie helped where they just knew at a certain level, people would come out and see it.”
“Maverick Carter knows how to get a deal done,” Glover said. “So we made it happen.”
It should be noted that the “House Party” spawned several sequels, including two theatrical sequels – “House Party 2,” released the year after the first film and affectionately known (but not actually subtitled “the pajama jam,” and “House Party 3,” released in 1994. When we brought up the possibility of the sequel, we were not surprised that the writing duo has already been thinking about it.
“We do constantly joke around about how like all sequels, now they to go to space as the only way like you up the ante,” Olori said. “So we did joke about them throwing a party on this SpaceX-like shuttle.”
“’Avatar’ stole our idea too,” Glover said. “We were going to be underwater for the second one also.”
Now we’re talking.
“House Party” is now playing exclusively in theaters.
