Manitoba premier turns down Hollywood offer to host Chucky horror flick

WINNIPEG – Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has turned down an offer to have his Winnipeg mansion used in an upcoming slasher film about an evil doll.

Pallister says he was approached late last year by a site locator who wanted to use his waterfront home for the horror movie Cult of Chucky, which has been filming in different areas of Winnipeg.

The film is the seventh in the Child’s Play franchise, which focuses on a doll that is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer.

Pallister’s home is among the biggest in Winnipeg — a 9,000-square-foot mansion valued at more than $2-million.

The premier says it would have been fun to see his house on the big screen.

But he and his family did not want the home to be opened up to a movie crew.

“The idea of my wife and children and I making it up the carpet at the Academy Awards to see our home on display … would have been great, but unfortunately we just weren’t able to offer up our home,” Pallister said Tuesday.

Pallister praised the number of Manitoba locations that have appeared in Hollywood movies, including the provincial legislature which was seen in the 2005 movie Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But he appeared to have his tongue in cheek when talking about the Child’s Play franchise, which has never been nominated for an Academy Award.

He called the offer a chance to “get involved in an ostensibly fabulous Hollywood production of fine quality.”

“I tell you, those Chucky films get better and better. The more they produce, the better they get.”

Opposition New Democrat legislature critic Wab Kinew joked that a movie about a doll that attacks people with scissors might be apt for Pallister, whose Progressive Conservative government has been focused on spending restraint.

“Wasn’t Chucky fond of making cuts?” Kinew said.