the lost boys comp by mike hobson (5)

TLB is one of my favourite vampire films ever. I was a kid the summer it came out. I had tons of fun with it, and John Alvinfs classic poster hung on my room for a long time. What I didnft know until a few years ago is that getting the right key art for this film was one of the most complicated jobs WB ever faced.

WB worked, in early stages, with basically all the top agencies of the time; Intralink, Seiniger, Spirosc Samples from those works are hard to find, but Ifll leave some interesting pics on the additional pics below (thanks to Jenny Kirkpatrick for forwarding me the photo comp with the yellow title). So; we know this happened often with potential blockbusters, nothing new so far (did you guys know that Alvin and Bill McCloskey did some comps at Intralink for gBack to the Futureh? Boy, Ifd love to see how those looked!). In the end, Intralink got the job. Wefve all seen some of John Alvinfs amazing finishes (pics below too!); the stop signc the house in a summer nightc the sneakers on the window...

But it wasn't that easy, was it? George Andreade (who arrived shortly before this was assigned to Intralink) told me once that he remembers this film like the first time he saw how complicated a job could get. According to Andreade, they did more than 50 comps for this, and had to deal with Joel Schumacher being a bit tyrannical when reviewing all the ideas he didnft like. Some of the parts thought this had to be sold as a teen comedy with little touches of horror (like you can see on my pics in the comments area), the studio thought that was the best way to get the audience on the theaters, but for Schumacher the comedy was irrelevant; he wanted a teen horror sexy movie.

In the end, Fred Tio from WB saw some of the comps that Alvin had done using the photo shoot material, and decided that was the way to go. McCloskey designed the final logo like he usually did (early in production the film was called simply gLost Boysh, so he had to rework it), and that was it. We didn't get another of Alvin's painted masterpieces (well, not 100% painted at least) but Schumacher certainly got his teen sexy vampire poster. The Intralink / Alvin process left us some gems though, including these early comps by Mike Hobson.