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Melissa Joan Hart’s Horror Remake was 17 Years in the Making

Actress-turned-director Melissa Joan Hart had to wait 17 years before realizing her dream of remaking 1980s thriller The Watcher In The Woods.

The former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star has stepped behind the camera to revamp the fantasy film for a new TV movie, but Hart admits she had originally hoped to feature in the project herself when she and her producer mother Paula first came up with the idea years ago.

“On hiatuses from Sabrina, we’d always figure out what’s the summer project? What are we gonna do?,” Melissa explained on Today. “She (her mum) asked me what I wanted to do and Watcher in the Woods was one of my favorite movies as a child so she was trying to seek out the rights from Disney and it took 17 years.

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“And now I’m too old to play the teenager, too young to play Mrs. Aylwood, the role that we put Anjelica Huston in, that was originally (made famous by) Bette Davis.”

Melissa, 41, instead served as director and executive producer of the new The Watcher in the Woods, but she didn’t have to work too hard with Huston as her leading lady, although the initial thought of giving the 66-year-old instructions on set made the former child star nervous.

She continued, “I was like, kind of freaking out. Like, how do you direct an Oscar award-winning actress whose father (John Huston) was a director? How do you do that? So I just decided, you know what? You let Anjelica Huston be Anjelica Huston… And having someone like that, what’s really awesome, is that… you have do less work because that piece of the puzzle is already taken care of…”

The Watcher in the Woods, which also stars Tallulah Evans, premieres on Lifetime on Saturday (21Oct17).

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