In the original horror film Witchboard from 1986, a young woman (Tawny Kitaen) becomes obsessed with a Ouija board at a party. She is then terrorized by a malevolent spirit, leaving her boyfriend and her ex to try to figure out what’s going on. It’s a cult film, although definitely of its time, and was inspired by the writer’s real experience with a Ouija board.
Now, writer/director Chuck Russell (a horror icon in his own right) is giving the film an update with 2025’s Witchboard, expanding the world and lending the scary premise a fresh, modern spin. The story is bigger, unfolding across two distinct yet interconnected timelines: one reveals the board’s origin, while the present-day story follows the board as it falls into the hands of Emily (Madison Iseman). The film also stars Jamie Campbell Bower as a mysterious occultist who will do anything to get the artifact.
Russell rose to prominence with some of the major genre films of recent memory, like The Mask starring Jim Carrey and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. He also wrote and directed the 1988 film The Blob and The Mummy franchise entry The Scorpion King.
We spoke to Russell ahead of the wide release of his new film to learn how he approaches structure and character in the horror genre, and more.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Charlie Tahan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Madison Iseman, and Aaron Dominguez in 'Witchboard'
","img":{"alt":"Charlie Tahan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Madison Iseman, and Aaron Dominguez in Witchboard","height":475,"src":"https://200838.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/200838/Charlie%20Tahan%2c%20Jamie%20Campbell%20Bower%2c%20Madison%20Iseman%2c%20and%20Aaron%20Dominguez%20in%20Witchboard.png","width":840},"link_url":{"no_follow":false,"open_in_new_tab":true,"rel":"noopener","sponsored":false,"url":{"content_id":null,"href":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2256055/?ref_=ttfc_ov_bk","href_with_scheme":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2256055/?ref_=ttfc_ov_bk","type":"EXTERNAL"},"user_generated_content":false}}]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_objects" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}[]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"NOT_SMART"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "wrap_field_tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"div"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% end_module_block %}Final Draft: What attracted you to doing a new take on Witchboard?
Chuck Russell: Everything is about timing, I guess in life, but in my film work, certainly. I’d been meaning to return to horror. I started my career in horror with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and The Blob. I started being offered all these horror films, and I thought, “Well, I’ll never get out of this branding if I continue.”
I’m from Chicago and I’m from the theater … and I was involved with comedy, improv, and things like that. So I wanted to do a little bit of comedy. I’d produced comedy before, adventure, and action, and I always intended to get back to horror because it’s such a wonderful, imaginative vehicle for film.
And finally, the right property at the right time came by, and that is Witchboard. I consider it the third in a personal trilogy of reinventing classic horror. When I got Nightmare, believe it or not, New Line didn’t know if they were going to continue the Nightmare on Elm Street series after number two didn’t live up to their expectations. Number two has its own wonderful things about it, but they wanted me to reinvent a direction, and I wanted to base it more on Wes Craven’s brilliant original, and I brought back a couple of the actors.
The Blob was something I also started my career with, getting the property and reinventing that. I don’t really do remakes in my mind. I’m reinventing these things. I wouldn’t do them if there weren’t something new for contemporary audiences.
So Witchboard came up, and I’d been wanting to do a movie about pendulum boards. I’m fascinated with them. They’re centuries older than Ouija boards. The Ouija board evolved from the pendulum board: the whole idea of pendulums, and astrological signs, and ancient symbols, and spell casting. It’s just very visual, and I’m interested in the mystical, magical side of the horror genre.
So I thought, “You know what? This is an amazing vehicle. I don’t have to do Ouija boards. I’m going to do my witch and my pendulum board that I’ve been making notes on, anyway.” And it sort of all came together for me.
Final Draft: I did go back and rewatch the original film, and it’s much more contained. It’s more straightforward, whereas yours has sort of this epic quality. I’m interested in how you approached that.
Chuck Russell: I have said before that I wanted to put everything in this film that I hadn’t had the chance to do previously in horror. So I basically did. It’s all organic to this story. I’m proud of the flow and the pacing of the story, but I didn’t want to do another possession film.
What does it really mean to be possessed? Why is that spirit vengeful? What is a witch? How did that go down in the 1700s, and what was so torturous that drove this woman to become the queen of witches and invent the first pendulum board?
I was very interested in that, and it’s more than a fantasy. Everything you see in Witchboard is based on historical fact, believe it or not, mostly in the Lorraine Valley in France in the late 1600s.
It’s how Madison Iseman’s character, the lead in the story, is drawn into that world, through one magical pendulum board, a little bit like The Mask with Jim Carrey. I like films where there’s a magical object that starts the action.
Antonia Desplat in 'Witchboard'
","img":{"alt":"Antonia Desplat in Witchboard","height":475,"src":"https://200838.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/200838/Antonia%20Desplat%20in%20Witchboard.png","width":840},"link_url":{"no_follow":false,"open_in_new_tab":true,"rel":"noopener","sponsored":false,"url":{"content_id":null,"href":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2256055/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","href_with_scheme":"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2256055/?ref_=ttmi_ov_bk","type":"EXTERNAL"},"user_generated_content":false}}]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_objects" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}[]{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "smart_type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"NOT_SMART"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "type" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"module"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% module_attribute "wrap_field_tag" is_json="true" %}{% raw %}"div"{% endraw %}{% end_module_attribute %}{% end_module_block %}Final Draft: You have a lot of different characters here. The cast is much bigger than the original film. What are your methods for developing characters?
Chuck Russell: You’re asking two different questions. Developing characters in a screenplay is one technique, and casting them [is another]. I come from learning to be bold in comedy, improv, and on stage, and I try to maintain that through the process.
I think as writers, you’re structuring a good story. You want to know where it goes. I tend to structure before I write a script, maybe more than a lot of contemporary writers, but the trick is to be flexible. If I’m doing my job writing, a character may speak up on their own. Maybe it means I’m a little schizophrenic, but a character may start to misbehave when I’m writing dialogue. These are some of the basics of writing. You hope for a unique voice from your various characters. That’s one of the ABCs of writing.
I try to give my characters a little freedom. They might act out. My characters never split up in three different directions to find the ghost, things like that. I tend to try to do what my audience might anticipate as smart, and then have an unexpected outcome. But as those characters start to misbehave, I encourage that in my own writing. I want to see where it leads us, but I ultimately know where I’m going.
Often, the ending will change depending on the mix of these characters. So there’s that little chemistry set, which is all in my head as I write, but in my structure, there’s a craft to it.
When we cast, I’m looking for each character’s strength. I polish every time after I’ve done some readings and rehearsals, and a lot of times I’ll do, I call them ‘tea time readings’, when we’re on location before we shoot, and I’ll be polishing dialogue. That’s where I do my improv. That’s where I encourage my cast to do improv, and I can get the dialogue together in time for the scene to be ready.
I continue to groom those characters to be unique and play to the actor’s strengths in production. First, we’re writing and we’re being bold, and then we’re in the direction and production, where the real magic happens. I try to cast for good chemistry between those actors.
Final Draft: The thing that you just mentioned about the characters misbehaving, I feel a lot of writers experience, where characters will do something or say something, and you don’t know where it came from.
Chuck Russell: That is the best sign. Roll with it. If you think that they can’t call the cops when they logically would, let them call the cops. The cops don’t come. Or when the cops come, something horrible happens, and we cut to the cops dead outside the house. I mean, if the characters are misbehaving, as I call it, it’s usually a good sign. You’re following something that has an authentic thread to it.
Final Draft: You mentioned relying on your structure. What does that look like as you’re writing?
Chuck Russell: I used to do three-by-five cards. I recently saw a very wonderful clip by David Lynch talking about writing. God bless him, wonderful filmmaker. He had a very simple take, and it’s great to demystify it. I think people are threatened by the blank page.
Lynch just says, get 70 three-by-five cards … write a scene on each card, and you might write further notes on those cards, and then you write a script. He made it sound very simple.
It truly is that, because another cliché about writing [is that] great scripts are not written. They’re rewritten. So get the cops out of your head, get all the negativity [out].
You might have a very bad day writing a scene. Finish the scene, let it be bad. Let it stink the next morning. If you’ve written something, you’ll know what’s wrong with it. If you don’t write something, you’ll kind of get stuck on, “I can’t write that. I don’t know how to write that.” Write the worst version of a scene you’re having a problem with. What is the problem?
Go ahead, write it poorly, and I promise you, the next day you’ll have an “aha” moment most likely. If not, there’s possibly a broader problem with your overall structure. But look, it’s fun. Writing needs to be fun. It shouldn’t be a torturous process. Tell that to Ernest Hemingway!
Final Draft: You have a pretty big set piece later in the script, a big dinner sequence. How do you tackle really complicated sequences like that as a writer? How do you break it down?
Chuck Russell: When I write, I don’t. In fact, I’ve been asked before because I’ve done a lot of things. Part of my goal is to do something I haven’t seen before, at least a couple of big visuals.
And young writers have asked me, “Do I have to only write what I know how to do?” Absolutely not. Just the opposite.
When we wrote The Mask, I was like, “I’m writing things I’ve never seen before,” but I was inspired by Jim Carrey, hoped I’d get him in the role, and rolled with what I imagined I could do with CGI for the first time. That was really at the very pioneering days of CGI.
It’s a good sign if you’re writing something you don’t know how to do. That’s great. If you’re in my position where you’re going to ultimately direct it, I completely put it out of my head.
That’s stage two, and I break it down in storyboards. How are we going to create this illusion? I tend to lean toward how we create it with practical effects and perhaps enhance it with CGI in the horror genre, because in my opinion, practical effects are always more scary.
Final Draft: What’s the best bit of advice that you give to someone up-and-coming in horror?
Chuck Russell: Well, this is going to sound stupid, but it’s just true. It better be scary. I mean, that’s why we’re here. Why isn’t it a thriller? Why isn’t it another genre? What scares the hell out of you, and how are you dramatizing that?
It’s not just about, “I’m going to have a lot of pop scares.” There needs to be something thematic that’s dark, that’s moving through your material. I think you have to decide early.
There’s a trend in contemporary horror to just be about despair, and that’s a very valid kind of film. I mean, there are wonderful dramas that are very despairing, as well. I prefer wit in a horror story. I like the idea that there’s a hero inside the underdog that may rise to face an ultimate evil for the sake of a loved one, or a friend, or self-preservation.
I like the challenge of, “What is the puzzle? How can you defeat something that seems undefeatable?” I think that’s a really fun element in the genre. So for me, it’s a little bit lazy to say, “It’s really cool because I’m going to kill everybody, including the final girl,” or whatever. Yet that’s a valid approach to film.
I think that’s one of the number-one things. Are you looking for a resolution that’s resonant in an interesting way? Horror films should not necessarily have a happy ending. That’s usually a bad idea, but facing an ultimate evil can cost the protagonist dearly.
Witchboard is out in theaters August 15, 2025.