Sept. 21--The scary maze at Universal Studios Hollywood had all the creepy features that horror fans love at the theme park's annual Halloween Horror Nights: skeletons popping out of wells of blood, women in veils jumping out of hidden doors and serene portraits on the walls transforming into scenes of death and gore.
But the Crimson Peak maze that premiered Friday night also served another purpose: It promotes a horror movie to be released next month, distributed by Universal Pictures.
The Halloween maze marks the second year in a row that the theme park has used its annual horrorfest to help promote a horror movie produced or distributed by a subsidiary of the theme park's parent company, NBC Universal.
Crimson Peak, directed by Guillermo del Toro, opens Oct. 16.
"We are the living trailer to this movie," said John Murdy, creative director of the park's Halloween Horror Nights, which run on selected nights until Nov. 1. Murdy's team built the maze with input from Del Toro.
Last year, Murdy and his team also built a Halloween maze based on the characters and scenes of another Universal Studios movie, "Dracula Untold," days before the opening of the movie.
Among the six mazes opened at the park this year, the theme park also launched for the fourth straight year a maze based on AMC's popular series "The Walking Dead." This year, however, Murdy expanded the maze to twice the length of last year's maze, adding twice as many zombie characters.
He said he needed to extend the maze to include most of his favorite scenes from the series' last season. "There was a lot of choose from," Murdy said.
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