Why Sam Raimi Turned Down The Offer To Direct This Infamous Stephen King Movie

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It's mind-blowing to consider that Stephen King's 1977 short story "Children of the Corn" has been milled into so, so many feature films. Its story is pretty simple and follows an itinerant couple as they pass through the remote city of Gatlin, Nerbaska. There, they find that the town's adults are missing and that the children are all part of a strange, corn-based cult. The kids pay homage to a corn deity they call He Who Walks Behind the Rows and make blood sacrifices to it. Somehow that premise gave rise to many, many "Children of the Corn" movies produced from 1983 to 2020. It's hard to define the word "cornography," but I know it when I see it. 

The 1984 "Children of the Corn" film was directed by Fritz Kiersch and released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. It was made for a modest budget of $3 million, and it starred a pre-"Terminator" Linda Hamilton and a pre-"Thirtysomething" Peter Horton. It was something of a hit, too, making $14.6 million at the box office. Kiersch's film isn't terribly remarkable, although it does feature a few creepy scenes of an empty Nebraska town and fun performances from John Franklin as Isaac, the child corn-cult leader, and Courtney Gaines, his hollering sidekick. One wouldn't be able to tell by looking at it that "Children of the Corn" would inspire the bizarro horror franchise that it did.

"Children" was produced by Donald P. Borchers, and he once published videos on his YouTube channel noting that, when he was looking for directors for the flick, he approached Sam Raimi. At the time, Raimi had only made his first feature, "The Evil Dead," but he turned down the gig because he wasn't going to be able to shoot the film as quickly as desired.

In one video, Donald P. Borchers explained how he came to find Sam Raimi. "The Evil Dead" was a huge hit in the horror world, making back many times its minuscule budget. Stephen King saw it and even provided a critical quote, which was printed on a poster for "The Evil Dead." King called it "the most ferociously original horror film of the year." 

But Raimi would not have been able to turn in a movie on the schedule Borchers wanted. "Evil Dead" star Bruce Campbell noted in his autobiography "If Chins Could Kill" that "The Evil Dead" took 12 weeks to shoot (an experience he called a "mirthless exercise in agony"). It was also made independently on the filmmakers' own time, so it was a prolonged production from top to bottom. That didn't fit with the fast turnaround of New World Pictures, which needed it in theaters by early 1984. As Borchard recalled:

"They had me meet Sam Raimi to direct it. And I thought 'This is going to be great!' 'Evil Dead' had just come out, and Stephen King had one line that it's a fine movie. That was on the post, and that sold the movie. [...] That set up Sam Raimi's whole career. And I meet with [him], and the first thing he said was that on 'Evil Dead,' they had 18 months pre-production. Well, we had to shoot in six weeks because we were facing a corn harvest. And the distribution company, we had a slot in February where we wanted to place the picture."

Borchers said that Raimi was interested in making "Children of the Corn," but there was no way he could get everything prepped for shooting in four weeks. 

Donald P. Borchers was a little let down by Sam Raimi's response. He liked the idea of Raimi directing "Children of the Corn," as he had already made one hit horror movie and was clearly able to work with a small budget. Raimi would instead go on to make the zany 1985 crime comedy "Crimewave" (which he co-wrote with the Coen Brothers), leaving Borchers to go look for another director. 

Luckily, Borchers knew Fritz Kiersch from a string of TV commercials they had made together. Speaking in a YouTube video, Borchers explained that he was really impressed with Kiersch ("He had an eye"), stating that he, coming from the world of commercials, most certainly knew how to work on a tight schedule. ("Lucky [Market] would call us up on a Tuesday, and we'd be shooting by Wednesday afternoon.") Moreover, at the time, Kiersch had never directed a feature film, so "Children of the Corn" was a great opportunity for him. He would go on to helm many other movies, including the James Spader teen drama "Tuff Turf" in 1985, the high-concept fantasy flick "Gor" in 1987, the 1989 coming-of-age film "Under the Boardwalk," and the 2006 straight-to-home-media film "The Hunt." 

"Children of the Corn" made its money and, as mentioned, spawned a whole franchise. From 1992 to 2018, the masses were periodically treated to "Corn" sequels every few years. The original movie was also remade twice in 2009 and in 2020. Heck, Charlize Theron made her film debut in 1995's "Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest." It's a corn maze of movies.