[Interview] ‘Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire’ Producer Joe Bandelli Says Fans Might see the Abbadon Again

Angela Hernandez

5 years ago

Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire dropped on Shudder last week. The found footage franchise has been scaring fans since 2015, with the first film, Hell House LLC. The sequel continued the story and gave more background into the Abbadon Hotel. Now the third installment, Lake of Fire, brings the story full circle. We recently had a chance to speak with producer Joe Bandelli about all things Hell House LLC.

ScaryNerd: Hell House LLC III was a good bookend to the series. Was it important for you to tie the previous films into this one in a way that was both callback and new revelations?

Joe Bandelli: Absolutely. We know that we had a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied up. So we wanted to make sure from the start of filming Lake of Fire, that we were going to answer some of those questions. Obviously, we didn’t answer them all, but we love to read the fan theories and see what people think. So we’re okay with letting some things be TBD for now. Maybe we’ll get a chance to answer everything down the road.

Were there any challenges in working in the hotel for each film?

We love working at the Waldorf Estate of Fear. The owner of the haunted attraction and our Production Designer, Angie Moyer always makes the place so comfortable and a great environment for us to work in. In pre-production, Steve always runs things in the script past her so by the time we get to set, she has a solid game plan laid out and we are good to go. I think the biggest challenges we run into in the third film are trying to make the place seem or look a little different. We’ve been there for three films now, so sometimes, things get a little repetitive and we definitely wanted to try to give the audience some new scares.

Were there any strange occurrences that happened during filming?

Haha, everyone would have loved if that happened, right? No, nothing strange outside of us shooting our film. I’m not a huge believer in supernatural, so I think we were quite safe. But it would be interesting though if something creepy did happen on set of a found footage haunted attraction film, that discusses a haunted house attraction malfunction, while being shot at a haunted house attraction in real life. Say that a few times over and see if it makes sense.

Is there more of the Hell House LLC story to be told? Like a prequel about Tully and the Abbadon, maybe in series form?

I think we’ve concluded the story that we originally set out to tell with the group that created Hell House LLC. I can definitely say that we are done moving forward in the storyline. But….there are always more stories to be told. Steve and I just got off the phone a few hours ago and we were talking about a few ideas that I think fans are really going to love. We are currently trying to develop a prequel series called The Abaddon Tapes with our good friends over at Terror Films.

Are you currently working on any other projects?

Steve and I are talking about a couple projects that we are probably going to collaborate on next year (one is narrative, and one is found footage). But they are still in development and we don’t want to go too much into detail on those just yet.

Aside from that, this opportunity in found footage horror has been such an amazing experience for me personally. I am fortunate enough to be directing a documentary called Unknown Dimension: The Story Behind Paranormal Activity. Which is the behind the scenes tell all film about how the Paranormal Activity franchise was made. I’ve already interviewed Oren Peli, Katie Featherson, and Micah Sloat, as well as so many other people that were key to making the franchise a success. Look for that one to come out next year at some point.

Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire is now available to stream on Shudder. You can check out the teaser trailer below. Be sure to follow ScaryNerd for more of all things horror!

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Angela Hernandez