Here is what they had to say:

To begin with, I’m sure you were hoping for it but were you surprised by the impressive opening weekend that the movie had and how did it feel to knock Tom Cruise out of the number one spot at the box office?

William Brent Bell: Oh totally. I think everyone thought pretty decently going into the opening week that we weren’t going to completely loose the studio’s money or anything. But absolutely no one, even over the (opening) weekend, could predict how passionate people would be about the movie and how many people would go and see it.

Matthew Peterman: It’s especially exciting because we made this movie over two years ago and it was a completely independent film. It was Brent, I, and our producing partner Morris (Paulson) who financed it and shot in Eastern Europe. So for it to turn out like this is really incredible and we know how kind of rare it is so we’re really excited about it.

Bell: You know, when a guy pretty much banks his life savings, $800,000 on a little tiny movie that has no connection to being released, it’s pretty scary. Then here we are a couple years latter and it all worked out.

I’m guessing that when Paramount decide to purchase the film they were hoping for the next Paranormal Activity franchise, and after the opening weekend results it looks like they may have achieved that, has there been any serious talk about making a sequel yet?

Peterman: We talked about it but really everyone is still busy with the domestic opening of the movie and with the rollout internationally. So we are kind of waiting. It’s going to be Paramount’s decision really. So we’re going to relax for a couple of weeks and focus on the movie, and not over think it. Hopefully they’ll come to a decision in the next ten days as to if we’re going to start moving forward with the sequel (or not).

Do you already have a script written or just some ideas for the project hashed out?

Bell: I mean pretty much I think we know exactly how we want to do it. We haven’t written anything because it would be kind of a possible waste of time. But we know the direction and the story always lends itself to a lot of other elements.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet, what would you say to get them excited and interested in going out and watching the film?

Peterman: I would say that it’s a really honest film that shows elements of exorcism and that world, which people haven’t seen before. Plus, it has an ending that you won’t expect.

Well, since you brought it up, some audiences have been critical of the film’s abrupt ending, what do you think about that criticism and what were some of your reasons for creating the film’s unusual conclusion?

Bell: Well, I think one of the reasons for the abruptness of the ending is that sometimes real-life doesn’t always follow a perfect structure. Things don’t always end or occur, when or how, you expect them to, or even want them to sometimes. So that just came out of that realism. There is a lot of shit going on in this movie and it’s not going to pace out perfectly. Bad shit happens and it just ended, so not every question was answered and not everything was resolved. But if you go back and look at the whole movie, and think about everything hard, you can draw a lot of conclusions. You can probably come up with different conclusions, but you can figure out what’s really going on. We think the ending is non-traditional and it has people talking, but we definitely don’t feel like we were trying to cheat anybody. We just tried to do something people wouldn’t expect. When people go to the movies these days they can kind of predict what is going to happen. We were pretty amazed that Paramount got behind that ending, its kind of an independent movie ending and it’s sparked a lot of discussion, so that is pretty cool.

Who came up with the idea for the website, which is shown at the end of the film?

Peterman: I will say is that it was late in the game that the concept of the website came up. That is a different part of it and what Brent was referring to was the abruptness of the ending and that sort of thing. But the website idea we thought on one hand was neat, interesting, and the first of its kind to try and have this interactive experience with the fans. When you are trying to do something for the first time, it’s never going to go smoothly when it’s semi-experimental. So we had several different options for the ending that we all played around with. They didn’t try to push anything on us but it was (the studio’s) novel idea to put the URL up there.

Bell: Aside from the URL, the ending is the way it was in the original script and its what the actors all read. We shot some other stuff as well and we played around with that stuff and tested the movie many times with many different endings. All of us, from the top of the studio all the way down to us, all circled around the ending that is in the film right now, aside from maybe the website idea. Pretty much the problem was that there were certain loose ends, and if you pay attention to the film really closely, its pretty clear that some of those loose ends are tied up. But we did do some testing where people were a little confused about some things, but then trying to answer those things in the context of the film felt very forced and it didn’t feel like the sort of things that in the story, a documentary filmmaker would be focused on. One of the smarter people at Paramount had the idea to say, “Hey, if you are interested to learn more about what happens go to this website.” It allows us to put a lot of footage that didn’t make it into the film there, and also allowed us to answer those questions to some degree, and it allowed us in the future to put more and more content on there. It’s almost like having the DVD extras earlier but it has a bit of a through-line and acts as a bridge to continue the story. So it was a cool idea and they are such masters with online interactivity and understanding that world, so it seemed like a chance that we trusted them to take. It may not have worked but it was still worth a shot, and it was interesting.

The “found-footage” technique in horror films is something that has become really popular over the last few years, and has worked in some films and has not worked in others. Once you decided to embrace this genre, was there anything in particular in the writing process that you tried to do to make this movie original and standout from other similar films that we’ve seen in the past?

Peterman: I think that from a producing standpoint, once we got financing for the film, “found footage” wasn’t really a term that was used that much. But we wanted to film sort of a faux documentary and that’s why we thought that we could make it for a (certain) price. Once we got into the writing of the script, at the time Paranormal Activity had not come out yet so that was not on our radar. What was, obviously, was The Blair Witch Project and nothing had been done like that since then. Of course, shortly after, Paranormal Activity came out and then other movies as well but we were already making the film by then. So we tried to make it as different from Blair Witch as possible. We really tried to embrace this honest documentary vibe and that is really what the first half of the movie is. It feels like you are watching an actual documentary. We really tried to go down that route, sell it, and make it authentic.

Finally, I know that you shot in Rome and in Vatican City; did you receive any backlash from the Catholic Church while you were shooting there, or about the content of your film since it has been released?

Bell: Well, there was a backlash while we were shooting the movie. When we moved to Vatican City, we really didn’t have permission for anything. That’s the beauty of technology, small cameras and improvisational actors. I’ll be honest with you, there hasn’t been really much of a backlash yet, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some, although I know Paramount prepared for that legally a long time ago.

Peterman: Here is the thing, we never once set out to make an anti-church movie, or an anti-religious movie at all. All we did was research on exorcism and talked to priests and exorcists. We listened to what they had to say in trying to tell the most authentic and realistic story we could. So anything that is going on in this movie with our priests, who are good men, men of the cloth, and are doing what they think is right even though they have a difference of opinion with the church, those are things that actually exist in real life. We don’t think we made an anti-religious movie or an anti-church movie at all, we just think we made an authentic movie.

Bell: One more thing that we found is that exorcists as a group are shunned by the Catholic Church, and its because they make the Catholic Church look a bit antiquated, so they try to keep them at bay and in the closet a little bit. In the movie that’s kind of what happens, so no, we don’t expect the church to like it. They might pretend that it is an anti-church movie but in actuality it’s about a dirty little secret that they don’t want anybody to know about but it’s really happening. 

The Devil Inside is frightening audiences in theaters now!