During an interview late 2009, director Shawnee Mercer talked about the original Night of a Thousand Screams (and its sequel) feature and how they were never officially released in North America, yet they seemed to have found a following thanks to bootlegs and torrent downloads. Originally upset over this, McCormack began developing a remake in 2007, but it never went anywhere. Almost ten years after the first film began filming, the director decided to not exactly remake the films, but rebooting the series.