The Omen

( 1976)

That was a “mystery- suspense thriller” [ laughs]. I’ll tell you something – if it was a horror film, I couldn’t have gotten it made. Because nobody wanted to make a horror film. But it was pitched to Fox producer Alan Ladd by me – he was the head of the studio, a great guy – that we wanted to make a mystery- suspense thriller. He read it, and he said, “You got the go.” We never would have got Gregory Peck if we’d said, “This is a horror film.” So we treated it like, “How could all these things ever happen to anybody in one day? It had to be insanity.” That’s how we got it made.