Six Flags Bringing Horror Franchises Saw, The Conjuring, Texas Chainsaw Massacr

Publish date: 2024-08-04

Six Flags' "Chief Fright Officer” breaks down the year-long process from imagining the haunted mazes to development to opening day.

Six Flags is bracing for the scariest time of the year.

The amusement park has unveiled its cinematic partners for Fright Fest, the annual weeks-long celebration of Halloween. For the signature haunted mazes, Six Flags has teamed with creatives behind the “Saw” movies, the “Conjuring” films, “Stranger Things,” “Trick ‘r Treat,” “Army of the Dead,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and creepy comic book “DCeased.”

Fright Fest is set to open on Sept. 7. Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles will have the bulk of the haunted house mazes, with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” exclusive to Great Adventure and “DCeased” exclusive to Six Flags Mexico. The remaining Six Flags locations across the country will have a mix of the mazes above. Click here to buy tickets and find out specific park-by-park details.

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Read more about the attractions via the official loglines below.

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The “Saw” franchise – Celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Saw” with an all-new experience honoring the franchise’s legacy of terror by plunging guests into the depths of Jigsaw’s twisted mind. Guests will endure torturous trials and come face to face with some of John Kramer’s most diabolical contraptions before time runs out.

The “Conjuring” Universe – Strap in for a tour of the Warrens’ most hair-raising and gruesome cases including those that inspired “The Conjuring,” “Annabelle” and “The Nun.” In each realm, encounters with cursed artifacts make you the target of the conjuring.

“Stranger Things” – The students of the Hawkins School District decide to team up to create a little innocent Halloween fun for their community – but things quickly flip upside down and morph into something far darker.

“Army of the Dead“ – The City of Las Vegas is under lockdown following a recent viral outbreak and survivors must look for an escape while battling the undead.

“Trick ‘r Treat” – Enter a dark and twisted candy trail nightmare on a jack-o-lantern-lit path of supernatural encounters which tap into your deepest fears. With Sam, the infamous Spirit of Halloween, as your guide, learn the rules of the spooky holiday before entering a world where tricks dominate treats.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (2022) – Guests are “cast” as visitors to Harlow on the heels of the influencers set on revitalizing the town – but their arrival leads to a stunning and deadly secret being revealed.

“DCeased” – Based on the #1 best-selling comic series, fans enter through the Hall of Justice to find that the DC Universe has succumbed to Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation! See the Justice League like never before, as they fight to save the Earth or end it themselves. Will you be one of the few to survive these new scares of the DC Universe?

Before the announcement, Variety spoke with Six Flags’ “Chief Fright Officer” Edithann Ramey, the CMO of the company, about how the parks were able to bring these film franchises on board.

How did you identify the franchises that interested you and bring them into the conversation?

We knew we wanted to make it big. We wanted the big ones that people recognized, and the list grew from there. We started to reach out and a lot of the different movie companies and distributors were very interested in working with us because they felt it was a great way to showcase their films. The conversation picked up quickly as we started to hone in on who we truly wanted to work with. We wanted it to be an assortment of films that were a little bit for everybody. You’ve got your slasher films, and suspenseful films, which are more about pondering and walking through “Annabelle” and “The Nun” and the scares, and we were delighted with the addition of “Stranger Things,” because it just widened the appeal and brings in all the people that might not love slasher films.

Once you get the OK on the properties, how long is the process of finalizing designs and building them?

It does take a long time, but this is the amusement park world and we know we’ve got to move quickly, so we’ve probably been working for a solid year. We started to think about the films and the lineup and how much we wanted to invest in October, November, December, and then in January we started to say, “Let’s do it.”

If the houses take a bit, it’s because the studios want to make sure their brands are protected and we’re doing what they want. Once we finalized that, we went into design. We were working with an agency in New York called RWS. They do this all the time, so they were able to bring in great designers who partnered with the IP to make sure the houses were representative of the film and they were fresh.

This agency has done a great job of finding new ways of bringing these stories to life. They went back, got all the approvals, and now we’re in the fabrication stage, which will probably take a couple of months. Anybody else would tell you, “Could we have two or three years?” But in my business, we gotta go fast.

When you’re working with the studios and distributors, they want to make sure that their vision is consistent with the properties. What kinds of notes and feedback do you get the most?

It’s very specific. They’re very protective because they want the film to be closely represented. I think about it in terms of when they take a book and then make it into a movie. We’re taking it and we’re making it into a haunted house and people are going to come in with such high expectations.

We get feedback like, “The character wouldn’t do this, she wouldn’t do that.” We get feedback about the colors, the flow and the story. When it’s done, it truly feels like when you walk into the beginning of the house where you lived and experienced the film.

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