Good Omen: Irish director brings horror home

AN IRISH director has taken his Hollywood remake of horror flick The Omen home after the Catholic Church threw his crew out of Croatia.

John Moore, from Dundalk, Co Louth, revealed that scenes from the €33 million remake were being shot in Ireland after the filmmakers hit trouble in Eastern Europe.

Moore, whose film Behind Enemy Lines was a box-office smash, said the locations for shooting in Ireland for The Omen 666 would be kept under wraps.

"We have had some security issues on the movie. For example, we were originally due to film in Croatia but the Catholic Church went against us and kicked us out," he said.

"Our sets were vandalised and burned down by thugs pretending to be shining lights of Christianity."

The filmmaker revealed he attempted to make the movie in Ireland with Irish Film Board support, but it proved too expensive.

"In fact, I ended up bringing a lot of Irish crew to Prague and Italy where we shot it," he said.

Moore is working to a tight timeline to remake the classic 1976 film for release on a significant date June 6, 2006.

The 20th Century Fox remake stars Julia Stiles, as Katherine Thorn, and Liev Schreiber as her husband Robert, while Mia Farrow has taken the role of Mrs Baylock.

The original movie concerning the arrival of the Antichrist into a family, starred Gregory Peck as an ambassador to the US, whose wife has a stillborn child. He substitutes another baby who turns out to be the Antichrist.

"We are shooting scenes of Julia and young Damien in the early part of the movie when life is still tranquil, before he turns into the full-blown Antichrist," Moore said, on the scenes being shot in Ireland.

Moore revealed the film had its own curse to overcome.

"We have had our troubles, we have had a lot of interesting problems on the movie, we have had strange things go wrong, the numerology 666 has appeared in bizarre situations," he said.

"You know somebody got rear-ended by a taxi-cab in Prague and of course the plate number on the taxi was 666. We had some of our camera systems go down and the error computer number that came up was 666," he said.

"On the day that we shot the scene where Liev Schreiber cuts the kid's hair, and reveals the scar that says 666, that entire day's filming was destroyed in the laboratory," he said.

"We have had our own little curse to deal with."

Moore has been based in Los Angeles for the past five years, ever since he was plucked from filming advertisements in Dublin, by Twentieth Century Fox, to direct Behind Enemy Lines.

He described the June 6, 2006, release date for The Omen 666 as "a fantastic marketing gimmick".