Read our exclusive interview with filmmaker Robin Hardy, who wrote and directed the new horror film ‘The Wicker Tree.’ The movie is set to be distributed by Anchor Bay Films into limited theaters on January 27, 2012. ‘The Wicker Tree’ follows two young, engaged missionaries from Texas, Beth, played by Brittania Nicol, and Henry, portrayed by Henry Garrett, as they travel to Scotland. They go on behalf of their religious group, Cowboys for Christ, to educate the people there about their religious views.

After being charmed by the locals of Tressock, the two agree to become the local Queen of the May and Laddie for the annual town festival. However, the two don’t realize the disturbing secrets they’re about to discover about Tressock’s seemingly nice townspeople. Hardy discusses with us, among other things, why he decided to write and direct ‘The Wicker Tree,’ and what the casting process was like.

ShockYa (SY): You directed ‘The Wicker Tree’ as a companion piece to your original cult classic film, ‘The Wicker Man.’ What was your motivation in retelling the story for modern audiences?

Robin Hardy (RH): Well, I don’t the story is, in terms of date, all that different. It is set for a modern audience, but in a way, you wouldn’t notice the difference, because it’s set in the countryside, and the people are on the island. In ‘The Wicker Man,’ the people were contemporary to their time, but they’re kind of timeless, because there aren’t any cars or cell phones. (laughs)

The same is true of ‘The Wicker Tree,’ although of course it’s set now. The main intrusion is that there’s a nuclear power station, which is really important to the story. Otherwise, the story’s set in rural countryside Scotland, in both case. So the similarities between the films are perhaps more important, in that I think it was Christopher Lee who said of this film, ‘The Wicker Tree,’ that it’s comic, erratic, romantic and horrific enough to strain the bowels of a bronze statue. (laughs) It’s a lot of different things, in terms of genre.

SY: Besides ‘The Wicker Man,’ the only other film you directed before ‘The Wicker Tree’ was 1986’s ‘The Fantasist.’ Why did you decide to take such a big break between directing films, and why was ‘The Wicker Tree’ the right movie for you to return to directing?

RH: Well, I do a lot of other things. I was trained as a painter in Paris years ago, so painting and drawing is a love of what I do. I’ve written five novels. I have eight children, so I’ve kept myself busy.

I decided to do ‘The Wicker Tree’ because I was always surprised that no one had made a film of the same genre of ‘The Wicker Man.’ In other words, where you had music and comedy and a little bit of sex and jokes. But ultimately underneath, something frightening truly happening. That hasn’t really been done much, and I thought it would be fun to do it again.

Also, there was a remake of ‘The Wicker Man’ (in 2006, starring Nicolas Cage and written and directed by Neil LaBute), which ignored all those things, but somebody kept the plot. The plot wasn’t all that special, it was a perfectly good plot. But the remake had none of the fun or the music or the jokes that made the first film special. So I decided to do another one in the same genre.

SY: While Anthony Shaffer wrote the screenplay for ‘The Wicker Man,’ you penned the script for ‘The Wicker Tree,’ basing it on your 2006 novel ‘Cowboys for Christ.’ Why did you decide to adapt the screenplay ‘The Wicker Tree’ yourself?

RH: Like I said, I write novels, and I have written lots and lots of screenplays, mainly for television, over the years. I consider myself a writer, as well as a director. So adapting my screenplay from my own book seemed like a natural thing to do. Then, of course, I’ve been directing all my life, television, commercials, dramas, theater, so on and so forth.

SY: Do you think writing ‘The Wicker Tree’ helped you in your directorial duties, once you were on the set?

RH: Yes, a great deal. Not only did I do that, I story-boarded the entire film myself. So I had every aspect of the film in my head, and that made the directing much easier.

SY: Did you aim to differentiate ‘The Wicker Tree’ from ‘The Wicker Man’ and the remake starring Nicolas Cage?

RH: Yes, it’s a new, different story. I don’t think I thought much about the remake, because I was making it in the same genre as the original film. In another words, I was using comedy and songs to create an atmosphere in which you believe the Pagan community, and the antagonism between the Pagan ideas and the Christan ideas, can live.

It’s difficult with the remake, because it’s so much it’s own thing. It’s just the plot, really. The plot minus atmosphere.

SY: What was the casting process for the main cast of ‘The Wicker Tree’ like, including Beth and Henry?

RH: Well, Beth was raised in the United States, although I think she’s half English. Steve, likewise, although he is English, he spent a lot of his life where his father worked in the United States. So they were both English-Americans, if you’d like.

But I saw them both (Nicol and Garret) on other various other projects, and I thought they were both very good, and worked very well together. I think that’s true in the film, they work quite well together.

Brittania had never really sung before, but my composer (John Scott) thought she had a potential to sing well. He worked with her, and he was able to get her to sing everything. I think she has a lovely voice, but she had no idea she had a voice at all before we started. I thought we were going to have to dub her in many of these songs, but we didn’t have to do that ever.

SY: Christopher Lee, who appeared as Lord Summerisle in ‘The Wicker Man,’ appeared as Sir Lachlan Morrison’s mentor in ‘The Wicker Tree.’ What is it about Christopher’s work that you enjoy, and what was your motivation in casting him again?

RH: Well, I was going to cast him in the main principal role. But he had a very nasty accident on a film he was shooting in Mexico. He had a bad fall, and injured his back. So he couldn’t film in the second film in the main role that I would have casted him in. So we invented sort of a cameo role for him. It works well, because it casts well back to the character he played in ‘The Wicker Man,’ where he was sort of Lord of the isle.

Then in this case, he was sort of the remembered grandfather figure who sets up one of the scenes. It’s quite a brief scene, but he worked very well in it. For the many fans of ‘The Wicker Man,’ it’s nice to see him again.

SY: Graham McTavish stepped in as Morrison for Christopher. Why did you decide to hire Graham to play Morrison?

RH: Well, I hired him because he’s a wonderful actor. He’s Sottish, and can play a Scott very well. He understood our story very well. Also, he’s done a great deal of work in ‘Rambo’ types of films, and I thought he would enjoy playing a much more classical role. He did, he appreciated being cast against his usual casting. I think he gave a wonderful performance. As you may have noticed, he’s now being cast as a hobbit (as Dwalin in ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ and ‘The Hobbit: There and Back Again’).

SY: It’s been reported that ‘The Wicker Tree’ had a budget of $7.75 million. Did having a small budget place limitations on what you could shoot?

RH: Well, it does have a fairly small budget, but not for a European picture. It’s standard for a European picture. American films are made for 10 times as much, because everyone has paid 10 times as much. (laughs) That’s the truth of the matter. No, I don’t think we were particularly curtailed by the budget.

Written by: Karen Benardello