By MICHAEL GINGOLD

This week saw the Scream Factory Blu-ray release of WELCOME TO MERCY, producer Cary Granat’s latest venture into the horror field (which he discussed here). It’s something of a return to past glories for Granat: He spent the first decade of the 2000s turning out family fare through his Walden Media company, but before that, he was president and COO of Dimension Films from 1995-2000.

During that time, the genre division of Miramax Films, headed by Bob Weinstein, became a major player on the horror scene with the likes of Wes Craven’s SCREAM franchise, Jamie Lee Curtis’ return to the Laurie Strode role in HALLOWEEN: H20 and Alejandro Amenábar’s hit ghost story THE OTHERS. Other productions didn’t go as smoothly, like the giant-insect chiller MIMIC, on which Guillermo del Toro clashed with Weinstein and was nearly dimissed from the movie. RUE MORGUE got some words with Granat about the triumphs and troubles during his time at Dimension, and a couple of projects that got away.

How did you first become involved with Dimension?

I was hired away from Universal in 1995, and then I became the president of Dimension. The company grew because we had a team approach, with some of the best executives and filmmakers working together. It was like this huge collaboration factory of everybody helping everybody; writers would come in, and Kevin Williamson would give ideas to [Robert] Rodriguez, Rodriguez would give ideas to someone else; everybody was helping each other. Dimension had this kind of bad-boy attitude where we were gonna go out and make these films by our own rules, and redefine the genre. Everybody on our team loved genre.

Can you recall receiving the script for SCREAM, and the reaction around the company when you first read it?

Yeah, we loved it! It was called SCARY MOVIE originally, and we bid on it right away and bought it as quickly as possible. It was brought to us via Kathy Conrad and Cary Woods, two major producers who were working with us. It was an incredible script. One of our executives, Andrew Rona, and Richard Potter [head of the story department] read it first, and they flipped for it. They came running into the office where Bob Weinstein and I were and said, “We have to buy this!” It was one of those electric moments where you knew you were reading a game-changer.

What led to the decision to change the title to SCREAM, and then use SCARY MOVIE on the later Wayans Brothers spoof?

Harvey came up with the [new] title. He called Bob late one night and was like, “We have to call it SCREAM.” It worked in both cases.

Was Wes Craven your first and only choice to direct it?

Pretty much. We went after Wes; we really wanted him for it.

Were you surprised by just how successful the film became, and can you talk about the development of the sequels?

People don’t remember the film opened in fourth place [at the box office]; it was behind BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA. Mike Judge is a friend, and his film opened at $20 million and we opened at $6.3 million. And then we grew each weekend. On SCREAM 2, we didn’t even have the script finished when we started shooting, and Kevin was powering away on it. I mean, he knew what he wanted to do, but we turned that film around so fast—within a year—that we had executives living on the set, working with Kevin and the team. It was the magical collaboration between Kevin and Wes that was able to make that work. We had a great team across the board; everybody knew what we wanted to do.