[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Bloody Axe Wound.]

Summary

The horror comedy ‘Bloody Axe Wound’ is also a coming-of-age story about first love, involving a teenage girl navigating her father’s gruesome legacy.

Producers Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton Morgan got involved after watching ‘Uncle Peckerhead’ and connecting with writer/director Matthew John Lawrence.

Burton and Morgan discuss their involvement in the film, their production company, a potential reboot for ‘One Tree Hill’ and Season 2 of ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City.’

From writer/director Matthew John Lawrence (Uncle Peckerhead), the slasher flick Bloody Axe Wound follows Abbie (Sari Arambulo), a teenager trying to keep the family video store afloat while selling tapes of the real-life killings committed by her father, Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke). When Abbie decides to take over and continue the slaughter in the town of Clover Falls, she quickly realizes that proving herself worthy might be an insurmountable task. And falling in love with the girl (Molly Brown) she’s decided to make her first kill is bound to complicate matters.
After checking out this horror comedy that’s also a coming-of-age story about first love, Collider got the opportunity to chat with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton Morgan, who produced the film for their production company, Mischief Farm. During the interview, the husband-and-wife team talked about how they got involved with the film, what led Morgan to add to the body count, casting Burke as Bladecut, the wild road to getting the film finished, Burton Morgan’s involvement behind the scenes, and what they love about working with each other. Burton Morgan also discussed the plan for the One Tree Hill reboot and her hopes for getting Morgan involved, while Morgan teased his reunion with Lucille for Season 2 of The Walking Dead: Dead City and explained why he had so much fun doing Season 4 of The Boys.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton Morgan First Met ‘Bloody Axe Wound’s Writer/Director Via Twitter

Image via RLJE Films and Shudder

Collider: How did you guys come to be producing this? Was it a finished script that came your way? How did you get involved?
HILARIE BURTON MORGAN: We watched Uncle Peckerhead during the pandemic, and Jeff and I just looked at each other and were like, “Who the hell made this?! This is so weird.”
JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: And Hilarie doesn’t like movies like this, so when I looked at her and realized she was seeing the same thing I was seeing because I was laughing my ass off of, we knew we should get ahold of the director and writer of it, so that’s what we did. I think we initially reached out to him via Twitter.
BURTON MORGAN: Yeah, we just tweeted him. We were like, “Yo, dude, we really like your movie. Do you have anything else?” His name is Matthew John Lawrence. And so, he proceeded to send us a stack of scripts, and we went through them while we were still in lockdown.
MORGAN: He’s a prolific writer.
BURTON MORGAN: He’s a screenwriting professor. That’s literally what he’s teaching people to do, so he had a stack of scripts. And this one really stood out as a marriage of Jeffrey’s work in the horror genre and this killing zombies, blood and guts universe. And I worked in the teen drama genre for a very long time. So, if there ever was a script that smashed those two things together, this was it.
MORGAN: It reminded me of the movies of 20 years ago. I don’t feel like anything like it has been made for a while, and it read like that. I was like, “If we can get away with making this, in this day and age, then we should push hard for it.” And that’s what we did. We went to Shudder. Obviously, we have a relationship with AMC and Shudder. The guy that I deal with at Shudder produced and distributed three movies that I did in the 90s that were equally inappropriate, so I had a relationship with him. That’s how it started.
Jeffrey, this movie kicks off with you melting a guy’s face off on a sizzling hot stove, and then following a young woman outside to kill her with a meat cleaver. Was that a requirement for your involvement? If you’re going to sign on and get behind this, do you feel like you have to be responsible for at least a kill or two in a slasher movie?
MORGAN: Yeah. Shudder was like, “Can you do something? At the very least, you have to kill somebody.” And I was happy to do it. Matthew rewrote the beginning of the script. And then, for Bladecut, Billy Burke was my biggest contribution, as a producer. He’s been my best friend since we were 16, 17, 18 years old – my whole life. He came up one Thanksgiving, six months before we started shooting. We couldn’t figure out who we wanted to get for Bladecut. I thought about it, but I was like, “I don’t know if I’m that guy.” And we showed Billy the movie Uncle Peckerhead, and he loved it. And then, we sent him the script and he loved it. So, we got Matthew and Billy together, and that was that. And then, Billy signed on to do it, which was awesome.
BURTON MORGAN: He was perfect.
It’s not an easy character to pull off.
BURTON MORGAN: No.
To make that character anything other than completely ridiculous, you have to have a great actor who takes it seriously.
MORGAN: He plays it perfectly. He also understands the humor in this kind of film, being that he’s my best friend. He loved it. I sent him a cut of it, and he was just beside himself. He was like, “This might be my favorite film that I’ve ever been involved in, in my whole life.” We were really lucky to get him. And then, the rest of the cast fell into place. Hilarie and Matthew really grabbed the bull by the horns on that because the girls are great in it. Everybody’s great in it.
Even with All the Obstacles, Hilarie Burton Morgan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan Had a Great Time Making ‘Bloody Axe Wound’

It feels like nothing about this movie should work. How do you have a slasher movie that’s a father-daughter story, that’s a coming-of-age story, and that’s also a love story? What was it like to see the first cut of the film?
BURTON MORGAN: The filming of it was a story, in and of itself. We originally were supposed to go film it in Louisiana with a different production company, and then that fell through. Mary Stuart Masterson, here in the Hudson Valley, has been heading all the film incentives here, and she was like, “No problem, I’ll take over.” And so, we were telling this story about leather jacket girls, and she’s the original leather jacket girl from Some Kind of Wonderful. And then, we got news that there was gonna be an actor’s strike, so we had a very short pre-production and very short production. We literally beat the strike by six hours.
And then, we went into post and saw the footage, and we saw these actors who were so electric and they were really connecting with each other. You could tell that the kids, in particular, really enjoyed each other on screen. We got an editor, named Justin Chan, who was such a joy to work with. Piecing it together was pretty labor-intensive, but really fun. And then, we got to do the fun stuff, like add music. We called up all our friends and were able to put in some really male-dominated music at the front of the movie, where you’re seeing all the male killers in their element. And as the film goes on, we start to bring in more and more female rock voices. That was part of the storytelling too, just getting these great artists to join in.
MORGAN: The first cut was nuts. It took a while. It was like putting a puzzle together. Because the performances were so good, the best thing that Matthew did was that he shot a ton of footage. With that, Justin and Hilarie spent a lot of time in the editing room, as did Mary Stuart. I think they did a really good job of piecing the film together, and re-piecing it together. Now, the final product is what it is. Hilarie knew all the bands. I just remember going through songs and being like, “I like that song better than that song in this scene.”
BURTON MORGAN: He walked into the kitchen when I was playing the He Is Legend song at the top of the movie on my laptop. He was like, “That’s my song. That’s my kill song. I want that one. Dibs!”

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When you guys launched this production company, what was the plan? How have things been living up to the plan and how much has it changed and evolved since then?
BURTON MORGAN: We had been producing separately for a decade, at least. And then, when we did Friday Night in with the Morgans for AMC, during the pandemic, I would say that’s when it became really clear. They say, “Don’t work with your spouse,” but we work really well together.
MORGAN: I actually very much like working with Hilarie. For one, she’s a lot smarter than I am and makes me feel good in almost any circumstance, which is great. I’m a silent producer on her show on AMC. That’s our production company that does it. Friday Night in with the Morgans, we were obviously involved in every aspect of together. With this one, we got a little bit more involved. I love working with her in front of or behind the camera. It’s really because she makes me look good, almost all the time.
BURTON MORGAN: I like that he’s my bully. Anytime I get frustrated and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” he comes in.
MORGAN: That’s when I swoop in. I’m good at fucking emergencies.
BURTON MORGAN: He’s so good at emergencies.
MORGAN: That’s when I can come in and stare at people and give them the side eye. My job is to be intimidating.
BURTON MORGAN: You’re so good at it.

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Hilarie Burton Morgan Wants To Break the Cycle of the Original With the ‘One Tree Hill’ Reboot

Image via The CW

Hilarie, I’m so curious about the One Tree Hill reboot because the first time around, that show was out of your hands, and this time around, you not only have a say, but what you say matters. How does it feel to not only have a voice in the project, but to have a support system with your co-stars? If someone had told you then that you’d get to a place where you wanted to return to that character and that world, would you have thought they were insane?
BURTON MORGAN: Yeah, for sure. As I started producing things and I was able to create safe sets and fun sets and sets where everybody could really experiment, and those abuses of power that I had grown up with were gone, I realized that is more fulfilling to me than acting. And so, even on [Bloody Axe Wound], making sure that the girls who were in this film felt really empowered and safe and heard, and that we were depicting their characters in a way that’s not salacious, was very important to me, the entirety of this shoot. So, going into One Tree Hill, if we can do what we had hoped would be done for us when we were little, breaking those cycles is important. Jeff [Dean Morgan] has been a part of that, all along the way, from the second I met him and I was leaving that show to getting involved with the reboot, right after we got married, and I was like, “Maybe we will explore this.” He’s been so supportive in understanding that doing it right is an important piece of closure. So, we’re gonna go and we’re gonna do it right.
MORGAN: I think for Hilarie, it’s important that she closes this chapter the right way. I don’t know when that chapter will close. It might be in ten years. But to have the ability to go back and have a shot at this, with those people that she grew up with, is an incredible deal.
BURTON MORGAN: I’m trying to get him to come do a cameo. Can you be a bad guy for me?
MORGAN: I can be the dude that runs the diner.
BURTON MORGAN: I think that’s Gilmore Girls. That’s a different show, Jeff.
MORGAN: Well, everybody has to eat. The Hill needs a diner.
BURTON MORGAN: I’m in.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan Was Happy To Be Reunited With Lucille for Season 2 of ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’

Image via AMC

Jeffrey, the second season of The Walking Dead: Dead City looks quite different from the first season. Did you know how much people were going to freak out over seeing Lucille again? What’s it like to have people freak out about a co-star that’s an inanimate object?
MORGAN: Well, I freaked out. I didn’t realize how much I missed her, not only as Negan, but as myself. Just getting to hold that damn bat again adds something to that character and the swagger and the confidence and the humor that Negan has. It’s been sorely missed. The second that she’s back in Negan’s hands, he is empowered in some way that he hasn’t been in the last few years. It was a cool thing, having her back. Most people hand their props back to the prop guys in between shots, and I would never let anybody touch her. She’d go to my trailer with me. She’d go to the bathroom with me. She’d get coffee. They named her after my wife, played by my wife, so it was always good.
As soon as I saw a photo of you holding it again, I felt like we need a moment where we hear Peaches & Herb singing “Reunited” somewhere in the background.
BURTON MORGAN: That’s so good!
MORGAN: You’re right.

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Was it fun for you to play that role in The Boys? As an actor, what’s it like to play a character that doesn’t have to face consequences and doesn’t have any sort of morality crisis because he’s not a person made of flesh?
MORGAN: It was pretty freeing. Having the ability and the privilege to do all my stuff with Karl [Urban], who I adore, I don’t know that there’s anyone I’ve ever had more fun with, just because we’re so friggin’ similar. That’s probably why [Eric] Kripke put me in that role. We’re two peas in the same pod. We had so much fun and we giggled so much. I was completely as irritating as you can imagine that I would be in that role, for the rest of the cast, especially Karl. Imagine him having to do a scene with a guy that he can’t really acknowledge, half the time. It was a blast. It was very freeing. I got to do whatever. I could try anything. If it worked, great. If it didn’t, we had a good giggle about it. I didn’t have a lot of pressure on that one. It was great just to come in and do my thing, and then leave and go home and see my family. I didn’t have to feel like the weight of the world was on me, so I loved it.

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Bloody Axe Wound

Release Date

December 27, 2024

Director

Matthew John Lawrence

Writers

Matthew John Lawrence

Bloody Axe Wound is now playing in theaters.

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