Well, we don’t really know. But it’s definitely many miles long, say 30-50 miles, and several miles wide. Some more hints about the size will appear in Tremors 4.

Some of you have noticed that certain things about Burt’s basement bunker changed between Tremors 3 and the TV series. You are correct and, as usual, very observant. Let’s back up to the beginning.

Tremors 1 – Basement has no safe room or shooting range. Entrance stairs briefly glimpsed on wall adjacent to the wall the Graboid comes through.

Tremors 2. Our production designer Ivo Cristante, duplicated the T-1 basement – with some deliberate differences. For example, he put a repaired section of wall to indicate where the Graboid came through in Tremors 1, although, if you analyze it, you realize it appears to be the wrong wall. In Tremors 1 the Graboid came through the wall opposite the gun wall. Here, the patched area is in the wall next to the gun wall. Okay, we’ll say Burt decided to move his gun wall during the repairs. He also moved his reloading equipment and added wood paneling to the wall behind his easy chair, perhaps to make room for mounting his stuffed Graboid trophy head. He also put up all his other hunting trophies.

We didn’t see the stairs, shooting range, or safe room, but we can assume they were on the unseen fourth wall.

Tremors 3. We see the wall we didn’t see in Tremors 2, revealing the safe room, stairs, and shooting range for the first time. The gun wall, repaired wall, and wood-paneled wall are oriented the same as in Tremors 2, but Burt seems to have become more PC and removed all his hunting trophies.

Tremors – The Series. As fans have noted, the entrance stairs are not in the same position. They’re now across from, instead of next to, the safe room. The reasons had mostly to do with differences in building sets for television versus for movies. But one fan has proposed that when Burt rebuilt his bunker after it was blown up in T-3, he moved the stairs to the opposite wall from the safe room. Hey, we buy that! Seems like something Burt would do. He situated the stairs to give himself a better field of fire toward the compound entrance. You know how Burt likes a good field of fire.

Also he replaced the Tremors 3 “drawbridge style” safe room door with the sliding door because it was simpler, more reliable, and took up less room. Finally, it’s been suggested that his firing range is in a different position in the series than in Tremors 3. But we think it’s in the same place, relative to the safe room. Are we wrong? Heaven knows we’ve been wrong before.

Now, a question for you observant fans, have any of you noticed what’s different about Chang’s market in the series?

Well, our idea way back in T-1 was that, before moving to Perfection, Burt and Heather worked hard, both made good money, and were shrewd investors. Their fear of impending World War III caused them to retire early and move to the valley for it’s desirable “geographic isolation” as Burt says in T-1. The capital outlay for firearms, fuel and water storage, etc, was large, but upkeep, taxes, and expenses would thereafter be low way out in the boonies. Since then, of course, in T-2, Burt made a lot of money killing graboids, and even more killing shriekers in T-3, so he’s pretty well set financially.  In T-4, we lay groundwork for the possibility that he also inherited money from Hiram Gummer’s silver mine.

Guess they have to ride the school bus to Bixby. We should’ve put a school bus full of endangered kids in T-1 or T-3!

Graboids are neither girls nor boys. They are hermaphroditic. That means they have characteristics of both sexes and don’t reproduce in the normal male-female way of most creatures on earth.

Okay, some of you say it’s north-south, and some of you say it’s east-west. We think it’s north-south. Here’s why. First of all, that’s the way the original town was built in the Lone Pine area. Chang’s Market was on the west side of the street. North was toward Nestor’s trailer (Nestor was the guy pulled through the spare tire.)

That having been said, what does reality have to do with anything? Burt points out in Tremors 1 that there are cliffs to the north (the ones through which Val stampedes the last Graboid) and mountains to the east and west. What we meant was the north end of the valley ended in cliffs and the other got narrower and narrower as the road wound toward Bixby. S.S. Wilson proposes that the obviously non-standardized map to which Val refers is not oriented east-west, but oriented to make the long valley easier to display on a wall, with Perfection at the South (right-hand) side. In movie-reality, Chang’s then ends up on the East side of the main street.

The clincher in our argument comes in Tremors 3. Burt refers to geologic survey maps in discussing the path of the current crop of Graboids. Using his laser pointer, he says, “They’re moving down from the north, just like last time. Jasmer quadrangle straight down to Calypso quadrangle. So clearly, Perfection Valley runs north-south. Also on the map for those into topographic symbols, slopes are indicated on the east and west sides.

We have adhered to this north-south orientation in Tremors 4.

Michael’s TV show, Family Ties, was very big at the time. The studio heads said we should read him because he was such a well known star. We were doubtful, since his character on the show couldn’t have been more different from Burt, nor is Michael at all like Burt in person! Little did we realize what a chameleon-like actor Michael is. Well, he blew us away when he came in to read, and we’ve benefited from the association ever since. BTW, any of you nitpickers notice Burt’s name is misspelled in the T-3 trailer?

We get a lot of fans asking why they can’t buy rubber Graboids and Val and Earl action figures or video games.  Some of you have even offered to help design or even manufacture them.  Others have helpfully suggested lower-budget ways they could be produced.  Still another asked if we just had a small leftover graboid in “hardened clay” he could buy.  (Sorry, the graboids were constructed full size; the clay versions are gone, and the casting molds are huge.  Even the ¼ scale graboids are pretty big.)

In answer:  we wish we could get Universal to think like our fans!  You have to believe us when we say we’re just as frustrated as you are.  We don’t control the Tremors “franchise.”  Universal Pictures has the final say over all marketing and merchandising.  I hear from sources inside Universal that the various marketing departments are expressing increased interest in our “franchise.”  In English, that means they’re recognizing that there are a lot of Tremors fans out there. Nothing is definite, but here are some of the things that are being considered at Universal: Toys, action figures, collectibles and video games.  The Tremors series is being considered for promotion in these areas, and deals may be discussed with toy companies, game designers, etc.

Universal is also planning some fun stuff for the official Universal Tremors 3 website, which should be up soon.  They might give away props or other collectibles from Tremors 3.  So be sure to watch for that site.  And feel free to e-mail Universal directly with your thoughts and wishes. Show’em you care!  Tell’em what you want!

May 2010 update: Obviously this did not happen.  We understand that some Tremors 4 props were sold on e-bay, notably Hiram’s bicycle, but have no more information than that.

From time to time fans point out similarities between the Tremors monsters and other monsters they’ve seen in the fantasy-SF universe. Such coincidences are inevitable, but we did not work from any pre-existing ideas or artwork in creating the monsters. For Tremors, the Graboids were roughly described in the script. Brent Maddock and I felt that anything moving through the ground would have to have a streamlined shape. I had a desire that the mouth be really unusual and “open like a flower.” Since earthworms move in part by bracing themselves with stiff backward-facing hairs, we added the concept of the spikes on the sides of the creatures. From those sketchy descriptions, Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis created the initial concepts which became the Graboids. Woodruff and Gillis have an extensive knowledge of the animal world and incorporated many real-world details into the final wonderful design they executed.

I came up with the idea of graboids turning into smaller monsters (instead of bigger) while driving in the desert on a trip.  For the Shriekers, we knew that we wanted bi-peds, the heat-seeker organ, and the same fantastic mouth design. Here again, Woodruff and Gillis brought us many sketches and concepts. The whole production team — including Maddock, Wilson, Chris DeFaria, and Nancy Roberts had input on the final look. After the movie came out, one fan wrote to say the Shriekers looked very much like a bi-pedal creature drawn by a well-known SF artist, but here again, this was just a coincidence.

For a more in-depth look at the world of monster design enter the world of  Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis by visiting The Monster Makers web site!

I had a job working as an editor at a navy base in the middle of the Mojave Desert. On weekends, when they weren’t shooting at the gunnery ranges, I was allowed to go hiking out there. One day when climbing over large boulders exactly like those in Tremors, off of which the people pole vault, I had a thought. “What if something was under the ground and I couldn’t get off this rock?”  I wrote that thought down on a scrap of note paper and filed it away.  That scrap of paper sat in a file folder for a number of years and was resurrected after Brent and I sold Short Circuit. Nancy Roberts, then our agent, told us “Now for the fun part. Get out all those old ideas”, So we did. And one of the ones she liked the best was this note that eventually became Tremors.

Tremors was filmed in Lone Pine, CA. The snowcapped mountains behind Perfection are the Seirras. The large dry lake visible in a few shots in the climax is Owens Dry Lake. Tremors 2 and 3 were shot on several locations near Valencia, California, just north of Los Angeles.  We could not afford to go back to Lone Pine where we shot Tremors 1.  One location on Tremors 3 is the same one we used in Tremors 2.  Can you spot it?  It looks very different because we were shooting in fall instead of spring.

Only sagebrush and Josuha trees. The original town was torn down soon after production. The local people contributed labor in return for getting to use the lumber, etc. Even the fake rocks we built (for the pole vaulting scene and climax) are gone. However, Lone Pine is a beautiful place to visit and a zillion other famous movies have been shot there. As for the other films: the Tremors 2 oil field office location was torn down. We thought the Chang’s Market built for Tremors 3 was going to survive. It was bought by a movie ranch and rebuilt on their land, but we’ve since been told it was later destroyed by fire. Oh well.

The guys at ADI have a whole range of things they use, depending on how close the shot is and what we want the audience to feel or learn from the shot.  The most common items are pieces of foam rubber, nylon stockings (they make good intestines) filled with various things.  Sometimes they use food products like canned pumpkin.  All of these things get mixed with their graboid blood formula developed specially for Tremors.

No one has ever been seriously hurt during a stunt or during a shot.  A stuntwoman sprained her ankle leaping into the bucket of the bulldozer in Tremors 1.  A crew member was in a car accident, but that was not on the set.  We are extremely careful and make sure that everyone on the crew is constantly informed of the dangers.  One thing we’ve always worried about is someone falling into the deep pits we must dig for the graboids.  One the pits are covered they look just like natural ground.  So we keep them roped off with construction cones and police tape until just before we’re ready for a shot.

Partly by tradition, most directors don’t do sequels to their own movies. Sequels usually have lower budgets (as was the case with Tremors 2 and 3) and if the first film was a hit, the director has many offers to do bigger movies (as Ron Underwood did after Tremors). All three directors of the Tremors films are part of Stampede Entertainment. It’s run by Nancy Roberts and her plan was to have all three of the original Tremors creators directing. That’s why Steve Wilson directed Tremors 2 and co-writer Brent Maddock directed Tremors 3.  The execption is that Steve Wilson came back to direct Tremors 4.

In movie reality graboids are about thirty feet long and about five feet in diameter at their widest point.  Amalgamated Dynamics has constructed only two of them full length (the one Val digs up in Tremors 1, which was only the top half lying on the dirt; and the split-open graboid in Tremors 2).  The other times you see them full length, they are 1/4 scale miniature models made to look large.  However, in the upcoming Tremors 3, we have an all new computer- generated graboid and he looks pretty darn cool in the tests we’ve seen so far!

Shriekers are about 3½ feet high and five feet long.

This is kind of a long answer, but hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

We had the longest time and the biggest budget (about 11 million) on Tremors 1.  On Tremors 2 and Tremors 3, we’ve had much lower budgets and much less time, but we’ve also had the ability to do computer graphics which didn’t even exist when we did T-1!  (Big expensive movies of course take much longer to make than ours do).

There are four main phases to making a movie:

First we have to write the script.  It takes about three or four months to get it right.  We always do many drafts, re-writing the script at least six or seven times, trying out different scenes, ideas, lines of dialogue, etc.

Next comes what’s called PRE-PRODUCTION – around three to five months.  Pre-production is all the work we do to plan the actual filming of the movie.  In pre-production we work with a growing staff of people designing costumes, designing and building monsters, designing and building sets, finding and buying props, cars and all the other things we’ll need.  We cast the actors and hire the crew.

Next comes PRODUCTION, when the cameras start rolling.  It’s the most expensive part of the process, because we have around a hundred people working 12 hour days.  On Tremors 1 we shot for about 50 days.  On Tremors 2 we had to shoot the same amount of action in only 28 days!  On Tremors 3 we had only 24 days!  We had to do it in less time to save money.  It was hard, but we got it done.

Finally comes POST-PRODUCTION.  On Tremors 3 we have about three and a half months.  The director and film editor take all the film we shot and edit it together, picking the best takes of the action, trying different ways of cutting shots together.  Then all the sounds effects are created.   The music is written and recorded.  Finally all the sounds and music are mixed together into one sound track and we’re ready to make prints videos, or DVD.

Okay, this answer may be longer than even die-hard Tremors fans want, but here goes.

In all honesty, there really is no answer. We’ve built Burt’s house four times, and never where it really is supposed to be relative to Perfection. So, instead of an answer, here’s another Burt bunker history.

Tremors 1. The exterior of Burt and Heather’s house was built many miles from the town location, because we did not have enough land at the town site. In reality the front door faced East. In reality, Heather looks off to the North when she trains her binoculars on the town. We used camera tricks to make it seem like you could see the town from Burt’s and vice versa.

When Val and Earl look off toward Burt’s from Chang’s roof, we did the same camera tricks. In reality they are looking East, so those point-of-view shots of Burt’s make it look like the front door faces North (movie reality), unless you assume the sun behind Chang’s is rising, not setting, in which case Burt’s front door would face South. See what a can of worms you’ve opened with this question?

The interior of the basement was built on a sound stage. We have no idea which direction anything faced in the basement, because we never saw the upstairs entrance to it.

Tremors 2. We built only the interior of Burt’s basement, not the exterior, and we didn’t see the stairs, so, again, we have no idea which way the building is oriented in movie reality.

Tremors 3. Again, Burt’s exterior was built many miles from where the town was built. This time, in reality, the front door faced more or less North. The interior was built on stage, but again, we have no idea which direction the entrance stairs face relative to the outside.

Tremors: The Series. This is the only Tremors where the outside of Burt’s is actually connected visually to the inside. In reality, I’m pretty sure the entrance stairs faced generally North or Northwest; i.e., that’d be the direction you face as you go up the stairs.

So, depending on which Tremors you’d use as reference, Burt’s front door could face North, East or South. In the series, it’s pretty definite the entrance and the basement stairs face North. Is that all clear as mud?

BTW, for the series the exterior of Burt’s compound was built on a hill barely a hundred yards from the Mexico location town site. So now we had to use camera tricks to make it appear further away than it really was. Movies are so hard.

Underground, along with the fuel and water storage tanks.

Eight to ten feet.

No, sorry, we just made the name up out of thin air.

Yes they are. S.S. Wilson is a target shooter and weapons history buff. He insists on accuracy. Of course, we never use live ammunition on a movie set. Blanks only!

No, though people refer to Graboids as worms sometimes, they are in fact a totally unique life form unrelated to almost anything else on earth. They do not have the power to regenerate from severed body parts (luckily!). Dawn of the Dead — Graboids?

This is due to the fact that the Graboid’s body is tapered toward the tail. As it echo-locates through the earth, only the hump of its back comes near enough the surface to create a visible mound of dirt.

Well, we’ve never gotten that question before. Certainly budget is always a difficult issue on Tremors movies, but somehow I don’t think we’d feel right charging a fan to be in one. We’ve talked in the past about having some sort of contest in which the winner would get a small part, but we never have time to set it up between the time Universal says “go” and the time they want the movie done.

Well, in the envelope or not, here’s where it stands: Brent Maddock and S.S Wilson are just finishing the script (March 2004). Whether it actually gets made depends, as always, on the success of Tremors 4. It’s hard for movie companies to stop making sequels if people keep buyin’em!

We’ve gotten a lot of very specific questions on the dimensions and color of Graboids, Shriekers, ABs, and now Baby Graboids. Believe it or not, this sort of specific info quickly gets forgotten, even by the people who build the puppets. The creatures are now in storage and someone would have to drag them out to measure them. However, here are some size estimates which should be pretty close:

How big are adult Graboids?
They’re about 30 feet long, six feet in diameter at their widest part (a few feet behind the head). The massive jaws and side mandibles are about three feet long.

How big are baby Graboids?
In T-4 they’re five feet long. But they start out the size of their eggs, about a foot long. The head and beak pieces are each a little over a foot long. Also, the babies have spikes unlike those on adult Graboids. They are longest just behind the beak, six-eight inches, and get shorter toward the tail, down to two or three inches. Then there are two tail spikes about six inches long (kind of like the horns on the rear of a centipede). They grow very rapidly (in about three months) to adult size. Adult Graboids lose the tail and edge spikes, but grow many more small spikes overall, for better locomotion of their  large bodies. They also shed the scale-like plates which protect a Baby G’s back.

How big are Shriekers?
They’re about four feet long and three feet high, with jaws pieces about one and a half feet long.

What are the specs on ABs?
They are just over six feet long, tip to tail, about three feet high, and have head and jaws about two feet long.

How big are the Graboid eggs in T-4? What color are they?
They’re about a foot long; a tad smaller than the ones made for T-3, due to some production issues. The color is pinkish white, but for a better look, check out the egg closeup we’ve added to the photo area.

What are the colors of the Tremors menagerie?
Here we suggest you just peruse the Stampede Photo Gallery for pictures. There are many good shots of the creatures. Many show the wonderful paint jobs by the creature FX artists. There are also people in some shots helps give you an idea of actual creature size. In addition to the main photo area, don’t forget to check Tremors 2 behind the scenes and the Tremors 3 Monster HQ for additional shots.

Well, our opinion is that they do leave trails. But the trails are very subtle. Since Graboids frequent dry sandy soil, it tends to close in behind then after they pass. Most moles live in wetter climates, so the soil stays pushed up after they burrow underneath.

That is going to be revealed in Tremors 5, or here on the webite, sometime in the future if we we’re unable to make Tremors 5.

We never thought that a Graboid’s tentacles take in air. However, it’s possible. One does wonder how a large animal like that could breathe underground.

That’s a really great idea. However, until Tremors 4, we’ve had had very few characters, and no extras. The series would have been a great place to do that kind of casting — but we didn’t think of it!

No, it sometimes seems like they do, but they are controlled by the Graboid, like an octopus controls its tentacles.

No. The tentacles are for grasping, sensing very subtle vibrations and feeling around. However, they do have taste sensors inside the mouth-like jaws. So when a tentacle’s jaws close on something, the Graboid can quickly tell if the something is worth reeling in to eat.

Potentially it is the Shrieker stage. If Shriekers get enough food, they can reproduce so rapidly that even Burt would have a hard time stopping them.

As far as is known, this cannot happen, since the albino form of a Graboid cannot metamorphose into Shriekers. El Blanco, in Perfection Valley, is the only albino Graboid known to exist at present. However, it is unclear how he came into existence! Was it an albino Ass Blaster which laid his egg? We just don’t know at this time.

All the Tremors creatures are custom designed, sculpted, cast and painted by artists with a lot of experience. It’s pretty hard for the average fan to do all that. One way is to study books, articles and websites on special effects. Or go to special effects workshops at fantasy film conventions if you can. Fans have to figure out what materials they can afford and which ones they’re good a working with. For example, you might be able to make a Shrieker head from papier mache – if you’re pretty good at sculpting. I’m not. I need people from places like KNB and Amalgamated Dynamics.

It’s just because we started out writing typical characters of the southwest. But when we began the series we made sure to write a number of black characters into it.

Sorry to report there are no plans for any. The only Tremors Game is our Tremors 4 game DirtDragons.

Budget. I think we wrote a scene where Burt and Heather walked through their house and into their basement, but the scene was cut, and the set never built, because we had to save money everywhere we could.

Well… ask mother nature. That’s just the way these creatures evolved. Shriekers use speed and numbers to hunt, so they don’t need grasping tentacles to hold prey. ABs use flight. Also, their mouths are much smaller and tentacle-tongues couldn’t hold anything very big.

It may look different, but we didn’t change the rules. Honest. El Blanco’s tentacles were cast from the same molds as the original tentacles and are the same length. If you’re referring to the night scene in Tremors 3 when Burt is trapped with Miguel, what makes it look different is that they are on a much lower rock than the ones we had in Tremors 1. Since the rock is lower, El Blanco was able to reach further up.

You guys¸ you know how long ago this was? Well, okay, S.S. Wilson contacted Production Designer Ivo Cristante, who fortunately has an amazing memory for practically every set he’s ever designed and built. Ivo is pretty sure Chang’s store was 60 feet (along the front) by 30 feet deep. The ceiling was 12 feet (because it had to be high enough to do the action where Rhonda climbs on the shelves). There was a two foot tall parapet (“railing”) around the roof (so the top of the parapet is at 14 feet). On the front, the parapet is taller. It goes up in two steps to about 4½ feet (16½ total). You can get a sense of how tall the front parapet is when Val puts the radio on it to talk to Burt.

Yeah, we know. But the answer is always the same: Universal does not seem to be interested in pursuing those ideas.

It’s a habit. Burt feels it “settles” the cartridges in the magazine, lining them up with bases all firmly to the rear, so that he’s less likely to have a feed problem, which would lead to a jam.

Okay, at the end of Tremors 4, the townsfolk went out and made sure all the dead Graboids were buried. They didn’t want anyone to know about them, as Hiram mentions.

At the end of Tremors 1, Rhonda LeBeck oversaw removal of the two least-damaged Graboids (the one that hit the flood channel wall and the one in Burt’s basement). They were taken to the college where she was studying, and preserved as well as possible. One ended up in the Smithsonian, believe it or not. The other was sold to a casino in Laughlin, Nevada (similar to the living AB at the end of Tremors 3) and it is not currently known what happened to it.

In Tremors 2, the government of Mexico had no interest in the historical or natural significance of the dead animals, and they were left to the buzzards. Burt, however, carted a number of pieces back to Jodi Chang in Perfection. She sold them off to the highest bidder.

After Tremors 3, a number of scientific institutions collected and studied the remains of Graboids, Shriekers, and ABs.

Yes. We adjusted their biology to fit the facts duly pointed out by the fans. However, another fan has proposed an explanation. I’d love to take credit for it, but the following is entirely a fan creation:

“So Graboids can produce anywhere from 3-6 Shriekers depending on certain factors physically for the Graboids and environmentally. Shriekers have to eat through the Graboid to get out right? But Shriekers Multiply when they eat. So is there a chance that there is only 3 Shriekers in a Graboid but depending on how much each one eats while escaping determines whether there is 3-6 in the end? So there only may be 3 in the beginning but when they come out there may be up to 6 or maybe they only eat a little each making a small opening to get out thus being only 3 in some cases?”

Very little is known about adult Graboid society. They clearly communicate, at least to signal one another about food sources. And they cooperate (to dig the bulldozer trap in T-1). El Blanco has been recorded making a wide variety of clicking noises, and will rap his beak against rocks to make a hollow drumming sound, but no one knows what this means. Thus far Graboids have not been observed fighting. Since they do not mate, it is unlikely that they have any conflict over mating. But so much of what they do is hidden underground, who is to say at this point?

Great question. Absolutely yes. Graboids are unable to hunt during rain storms. Wish we’d have thought of it! It would have been a cool lucky escape for someone being tracked by a Graboid. BTW, scientists recently learned that rain is one of the loudest sounds underwater in the ocean.

Hmm. Well, they are there. The design of the Graboids did not change. In fact we thought the spikes on the mini-Graboids in T-4 were rather prominent. It may be that in Tremors 1 we made a point of shooting a close up of them. Also, in T-1, Val dug up the whole length of one, so we saw more of its body that we normally do.

A number of design changes were made in the market to accommodate series style filming. Most notably, the front door was moved from the end of the building to the center. Space was also added in back to allow for Jodi’s living quarters. I don’t have any of the series store plans, so I can’t say for sure if these changes also made it more square.

No.  Each time an opportunity came up, we’d talk to Michael about it.  We’d always try to add new dimensions to Burt’s character, so that Michael would have new subtleties to work on.  It also helped that the movies are true continuations, so that Burt’s character always changed based on what happened in earlier films.  Still, truth be told, toward the end Michael was getting a little tired of Burt.  He once joked (we’re paraphrasing a bit from memory), “I’m very flattered that people keeping asking to see more of Burt, but let’s not keep doing this until they stop asking.”  However, the opportunity to play Burt’s grandfather in Tremors 4 was exciting to him, since Hiram was really an entirely new character.  He and SS Wilson had great fun discussing how Michael would bring Hiram to life; and great fun shooting Hiram’s scenes.

Perfection is North West of Las Vegas, toward Carson City, but it’s not very near either one. Present day Perfection is nearest the town of Bixby (not a real place).  In Tremors 4, we mentioned Carson City as the closest large town (but still a long ride), since we felt Bixby wouldn’t have existed yet.

1.  We never knew about that series (we were hard at work on Tremors 1).
2. Very cool idea.
3. See the several other places in the FAQ where we point out that fans are more creative the studio people.
4. Same old same old: probably won’t happen.

I’m not sure it was exactly square in the series, but, yes, the shape of the market was somewhat different.  Also, the front door is in a different place.  So to make a model, you kind of have to pick one or the other and go with that.

When you sell a screenplay (as we sold the original Tremors) you almost always have to sell all the rights with it in order to get a studio to buy it.  Once that has been done, they own all the rights to anything ever done with it ever again, sequels, remakes, spin-off, the whole shootin’ match.

Short answers:  We don’t know.  We don’t know.  No.  No.  They’d ignore it.  And it still wouldn’t help.  However, we are deeply touched that several fans have, in various forms, proposed fan-financed Tremors movies.  The harsh Hollywood reality is that studios almost never sell the rights to any material they own, even if they never do anything with it.

We know what you mean.  Looks weird to us, too, sometimes.  But there’s no cheating on set.  We used the same puppet(s) in all cases.  It’s an illusion due to the fact that when closed, a Graboid’s 4-part beak is actually fairly small.   But because it can open super wide, somehow the whole head looks bigger when upright and swallowing a person.

No, a Graboid can go faster than a human can run, but not much. They max out around 15-20 mph in good loose soil. A Graboid cannot not catch a car, dirtbike, or galloping horse.

A Graboid’s cylindrical shape has great strength to resist pressure (like a submarine does).  Also, moving deep into earth is not quite the same as moving deep into  water.  Various things can mitigate the amount of force the dirt applies.  Under the right soil conditions, a Graboid could theoretically go down several hundred feet.  The real limit to a Graboid’s ability to “dive” is that, like a sea mammal, it has to surface every so often to breathe.  It doesn’t have to actually break the surface because it can slowly pull air through a few inches of sand).  We don’t know how long one can hold its breath.

Any animal learns to sort out the data it can sense from the “noise” of the environment.  For clarity in the movies, we show the heat signature of a human as red against a non-red background.  But what’s really happening is the Shrieker or AB is seeing the difference between the two temperatures.  The creature is actually seeing infrared coming from both sources, but because the human is usually warmer than the desert background, the shape stands out.  It would work on a 105 degree desert day, too, because the human would be cooler (giving off less heat) than the background and would still stand out.  The only time the creature might have trouble would be on a day when it was exactly 96 degrees and humans were neither hotter nor cooler that the surrounding objects.

It does not appear so.  The metamorphoses seen so far don’t seem to be in response to the availability of different prey.  Rather they seem to be normal life-cycle events triggered by unknown circumstances.  However, given that the species is extremely ancient, it is certainly logical to assume each of the various forms serve some valuable purpose toward sustaining the species as a whole.  For example, Rhonda LeBeck has proposed that, since ABs are able to fly, their purpose may be to carry eggs long distances in search of new, fertile hunting grounds for the Graboids which will hatch from their eggs.

Very science-oriented question!  Given Graboids’ size, it is almost certain they can’t get all the liquid they need from prey alone.  Prevailing theory is that they must obtain water below ground by burrowing down to the water table, perhaps excavating a cavity, and sucking up that water that collects in it.

Unfortunately, Tremors 1, 2, 3 and 4 were shot mostly on private land in Southern California. There is no access to the general public for most of the locations.  A small exception is the area of large boulders seen in Tremors 1.  If you drive the paved and dirt roads west of Lone Pine, CA, you will be in the general area where we shot the end of the movie.  If you’re diligent, you’ll discover the narrow spot where the road workers were killed.  Someone at the Lone Pine movie museum may be able to help you find that one.

I’m pretty sure the boulder where Val, Earl and Rhonda spent the night is a real one.  But it’d be pretty difficult to figure out now, all these years later, which one it was.  All I can say is it is probably near one of the dirt roads that go through the area.  Maybe if you drove around with a frame-grab from the movie, and a really good eye for shapes…?

The rocks on which they did their pole vaulting were fake (built by our production designer’s team) and are no longer there).

If you drive the dirt roads east of Lone Pine, you will be in the general area where Val and Earl fell off their horses and where the Graboid crashed into the concrete drainage ditch wall. Nothing remains of the sets, and we have no records of the exact locations, so even we probably couldn’t these exact spots today.

The specific vibration of a Graboid’s movement through the earth is very distinctive and is easily recognized by other Graboids.  Even though blind, they can readily tell friend from foe, or friend from prey.

This is really sort of an Alien vs Predator question.  And we’re filmmakers, not paleontologists.  But how’s this?  If Tyrannosaurus was a fierce predator (as some think), he’d win. If he was a lazy scavenger (as others think), he’d lose.  It’d be an interesting battle, though, since the Graboid could duck under ground when it needed to; and maybe could chomp the T-Rex’s leg and trip him.

No. Graboids are not aquatic. They are adapted to dry, loose soil.

The market in the series is a different shape (yes, I think closer to square), and the entrance is in a different place from the movies’ store.  They insisted we change the lay-out for the series to give directors more options for shooting people coming in and out week after week.

I don’t know the full legal answer to this.  Copyrights can be renewed by the original owners up to some maximum number of years.  I imagine all studios cling to them as long as inhumanly possible.  When you work in Hollywood, you have to assume you will never live long enough to regain control of your movies, since they will lapse into the public domain first.

Yes and no.  We own them in the sense that nobody has paid us for them, but we can’t use them or sell them to anyone else because they are based on characters/material owned by Universal

I like to think they’ve settled into a American small town routine.  El Blanco patrols peacefully.  There’s a steady, but not overwhelming stream of tourists to whom Jodi and Jack cater.  Mindy stops in a few times a year to see her Mom.  Burt still teaches survival skills and worries about the fate of the world.  And even though a movie wasn’t made about it, he did have a hell of an adventure in Australia.

We’ve always tried to treat the Graboids as real animals.  So as such, they are actually quite rare and limited in habitat.  So, contrary to over-running the world, they are more likely to go extinct.  Even a major Shrieker outbreak is not going to be a global disaster, for when Shriekers got into an urban setting, or met up with the National Guard (or Burt), they wouldn’t last long.

No, we saw Burt and Heather as deliberately childless, given their grim view of the world’s future.  I admit we never thought of a child grown up before their survivalist leanings took them to Perfection.  It could lead to the complete reversal of Michael Gross and Michael J. Fox on Family Ties!

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Yes, Universal owns all rights to everything related to Tremors, so it would be them you’d have to talk to about doing a stage version.  Good luck. 🙂

That’s kind of like asking, “Which is your favorite child?” I really do love all the Tremors movies equally for different reasons.  Each time out we did our best to come up with stuff that was hopefully different from the usual sequel.  And each time out we were very invested in making the best movie we could.

Yes, all the Tremors posters are embarrassing.  Here’s what happened.  We convinced Universal’s marketing department that they should not show a Graboid on the poster because the movie had  a really good surprise — the first-time audience really does think the monsters are the tentacles, the “snake things,” so the real Graboids are  shocking when first revealed. Universal was not happy with that, but went along with it.  Much to our horror, then, they came up with what you see, a tentacle made to look gigantic and with goofy shark teeth.  The whole crew, especially the creature effects guys, was disappointed.  But it became history.  And it just kept getting worse with each movie, until you end up with the extra-bizarre critter on the boxed set of Tremors TV series, which even has an eye! And yes, our guess is the original was inspired by Jaws, though nobody ever admitted it.

Were we inspired by Jaws?  Not exactly (even though early story outlines of  Tremors were called “Land Shark”).  We were inspired by 50s monster movies we loved as kids.  Jaws is really a spin on those same movies, so you might say we all had the same inspiration.

Graboids are not fooled by thunder.  It is a natural event and they can easily differentiate it from the sounds that prey make.  However, they are in effect “blinded” by heavy rain.  The steady noise makes it nearly impossible for them to hunt, so they just go idle and wait it out.  As to whether or not they can go deaf, you’ve touched on a point of contention among scientists.  We aren’t really sure how Graboids “hear.”  They do not seem to have ears or ear-drums, so some researchers speculate that they have some other mechanism for sensing vibration in the ground.  My personal guess is that a very loud sound would not permanently impair a Graboid.  In Tremors 1, Burt’s improvised explosives only drove them away, but they kept coming back.

Well, Tremors 1 was in some ways the most fun because we were finally getting to make one of our original ideas just the way we wanted to.  Yeah, we were fighting crazy weather, budget, and the worry that we might screw it up, but we were in creative control!  The later Tremors were fun in a different way, because we were more confident, but also harder because we had so much less money to make them.  Really, because they were all well-planned, none was particularly harder or easier than another.  And they were all fun to work on.

Uh — what?  Okay, Graboids are seriously NOT political.  Like, at all.

All the Tremors scripts were write-to-shoot.  That means, once we worked out the stories, we didn’t do a lot of extra writing or experimentation.  We stuck to the stories and made the scripts as easy to produce as possible, including when we handed off the actual screenplay writing on T-3 and T-4.  Probably the biggest change in any of the scripts is in Tremors 2.  It was written to star Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, and to include Reba McIntire.  When Kevin Bacon decided not to do the movie and Reba was not available, we had to do a pretty big re-write to invent the character of Grady and figure out the details of Burt’s separation from Heather.

This question gets into areas of legality on which we can’t give advice.  But the harder part would be getting Universal to look at it.  You’d probably have to get a Hollywood agent to make an official submission to them.

Well — NO!  Graboids are an ancient life form.   After all, they existed in the late 1800s, the time of Tremors 4.  So they could not have come from the military lab that wasn’t even built until much later.

Kevin did not feel good about Tremors for many years.  He felt it was a low point in his career.  But you are correct that, recently, he has changed his mind.  We are very glad about that, because we think he is absolutely great in our little movie.

Not at this point.

We’re always trying to sell new ideas for movies and TV shows!

Universal didn’t “buy” the franchise.  It has owned it from the beginning, when the first movie was made.  Universal has always made all decisions on what new versions get made and how the property is marketed.  Starting with Tremors 2, the studio felt the best place to make additional money with it was in direct-to-video.

We tried to hint at the answer in Tremors 2, when Earl says Val “married a good woman.” We don’t feel they had any sort of argument.  Instead, Val went off to start a life with Rhonda.  They could no longer be partners in the way they had been, so Earl took his portion of what money they made and invested in his ostrich ranch.  We’ve always wanted to explore more of what Val and Rhonda did, but have never had the opportunity.

Studios don’t like us to talk in detail about budgets.  But those numbers are pretty close.  Tremors 2, 3, and 4 had almost identical budgets and shooting times.  Don’t know about Tremors 5, as we did not work on it.

There are two parts to this.  In Tremors 1, we don’t think a Graboid ever attacks a vehicle that isn’t making noise.   For example, after saving Mindy, Val jumps on their truck, and that makes noise, so that’s why the Graboid attacks it.  Later, at Burt and Heather’s, the Graboid doesn’t bother their SUV until the creatures bumps it accidentally, causing the car alarm to go off.   In Tremors 2, we tried to make the point that Earl, Grady and Burt have Graboid tracking devices in their vehicles.  They are deliberately making noise to attract the monsters.  So our logic was, any time they saw the signal of a Graobid, they’d stop the truck so it would remain safe, then use their remote control bait-bombs.

We’re not sure why these creatures would do such a thing, since they are all members of the same cooperative species.  But, that said, it doesn’t seem like a Shrieker or and AB would have any chance against a full-sized Graboid.  It would swallow them in one gulp. An AB could probably take out a Shrieker, though.

We get this a lot.  It’s bittersweet, since, yes we know it and, no we do not control the franchise.  We have no say in how Universal studios handles marketing and product licensing.  Fans have had many great ideas for products.  Here’s a couple of the more elaborate ones:

“a table centerpiece, rectangle in shape, featuring the creature shapes in order, one after the other… egg, baby graboid, adult graboid, shrieker, ass blaster & back to egg… in their habitats. For instance, an egg shell in “water” as in T4, a baby graboid on sandy “soil” as it starts to disappear, adult graboid head as it rises up from the dirt, etc.”

“an AB that really blasts fire!”  (Admittedly, there are probably liability issues with that one).

There seems to be a theme in the current batch of fan questions: a desire to see Graboids, Shriekers, ABs and, I guess, even Mini-graboids in some sort of all-out battle.  Frankly, we don’t see why such a battle as being likely, given the rules of the Tremors world.  But perhaps one of you would like to tackle it in fan fiction?  Maybe you could show us how or why it might happen!

Ah, but the eggs in Tremors 4 were laid by AssBlasters, not Graboids. You have to watch ALL the movies to learn the whole complicated life cycle. Most of it happens via metamorphosis – like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Graboids metamorphose into Shriekers. Shriekers make more Shriekers hermaphroditically (there are egg-like sacs inside Shriekers, but they don’t lay them). Later, Shriekers metamorphose into AssBlasters. It is only AssBlasters that lay eggs — one egg each. Those eggs, if kept warm enough, hatch into baby Graboids, and the process starts over. We just didn’t see the AssBlaster in Tremors 4. In fact, we’re not sure how long AssBlaster eggs can lay dormant. It may be a really long time.

We always appreciate these kinds thoughts.  But it would not change the minds of the powers at Universal.  Tremors 5 made enough money that they are already working on Tremors 6.  Without us.

Graboids are individuals with different preferences.  Some are picky eaters.  Some wolf their meals.  Also, if a person’s arm happens to come off while being swallowed, the Graboid might necessarily know it, and would have a hard time finding it after the fact (as it will be making no noise).

The other answer is that in T2 and T3 we had better Graboid moving special effects rigs that could raise them up and down much faster, so it was exciting to for us to get to lift one up with a whole person actually riding with it.

Ummm, we don’t think we’ve ever said that Graboids have acids in their blood or saliva.  They’re not like the Alien, after all.  Fans, are we wrong on this one?

We are embarrassed to admit, no!  It never has.  And it’s a great idea!

“Life form!  Subterranean!  Tracking me acoustically!  Danger!  No disassemble!”

It became something more — all because of the fans.  Tremors 1 was considered a failure until fans made it a huge success in the then-new video market.  It took years for Tremors 2 to develop such a following that the studio wanted Tremors 3.  Even then, they told us Tremors 3 would definitely be the last one.  But the fans kept renting/buying, so the studio decided to go for 4 and the series at almost the same time.  Tremors has a life of its own, thanks to all of you.

Disappointed, frustrated, yes, but not bitter.  You shouldn’t be in screenwriting if you can’t accept that studios own your work outright and are going to do whatever they want with it. Just gotta move on to the next.

If this questions refers to Tremors 1-4 , yes, we noticed.  We hired the composers in each case and directed them to come up with new music!

Okay, this isn’t really a question, but we love hearing from fans from all over the world.  It roughly means: “I really like your site, it keeps doing it better! hi”

Thanks from all at Stampede!

We really do try to answer all questions, but sometimes they don’t give us enough to go on.  In this case, it doesn’t even specify which Tremors movie is being referred to.  In Tremors 1 alone, there is Val and Earl’s trailer, the septic tank pump trailer, Melvin’s trailer, Nestor’s trailer, and the earth-mover trailer pulled by the bulldozer!

Love this question!  We don’t know what movie it’s referring to, but it’s funny, so we’re posting it!

As we’ve said many times in answering these FAQs, we are impressed at the great ideas that come in from Tremors fans.  But, as long-time FAQ readers know, for this idea to happen, someone would have to convince Universal Studios to do it.  We don’t have any control over what they do or don’t do.

When we were doing the original TV series we were certainly considering expanding on the backgrounds of everyone in Perfection.  We hoped to explain that some of Burt’s money came from the silver mine his ancestor owned in Tremors 4.  But as we were prevented from working further on Tremors after that, none of our ideas came to pass.

Okay, I admit it, this is not really a question, but with the arrival of the “new” Tremors movies, we’ve been getting a LOT of comments like this, so I thought I post this one, all the way from the Netherlands!

Many thanks to our world-wide fans.

(Note: We get questions from all over the world, and sometimes the writers use English translation programs that don’t work so well.  In this case, I’ve attempted to re-translate the question from the original much longer version, because I loved that it offered yet ANOTHER fresh point-of-view from a fan.)

Our answer: as indicated in Tremors 2, graboids have actually been around much longer, since pre-history.  However, other animals have NOT adapted significantly to the various graboid stages.  The animals just get eaten, and eaten in large numbers.   That said, Graboids are quite rare.  Yes, they are deadly and voracious, as are the shriekers and ABs that follow, but their whole life cycle plays out in a fairly limited time frame over a fairly limited area, so while the local animal population gets decimated in the short term, graboids do not have the potential of causing any sort of widespread extinction.  Nature always strikes a balance.

Well, as I have to keep explaining, we at Stampede don’t control the rights to Tremors or have any say over what is done with marketing and franchising.   Many years ago we heard they were thinking of putting a Graboid on the Universal Studios Tour, but we don’t think it ever happened.

The graboids did not travel to other continents in our time.  They are an ancient life form and “moved” only as continental drift connected different land masses in the past. South America and Africa were connected millions of years ago, for example, and shared life forms then.  We’re probably stretching the rules of biology a bit, here, but hey, they’re our monsters!  As for why graboids attack certain locations, they are simply predators attracted to noise and vibrations.  If you make noise, they attack. So it’s really a matter of being unlucky enough to be near where they are.

No answer.  But it’s nice to get an occasional thank you!  Wait, I guess that was an answer.  Thanks again!

This keeps coming up — sadly only from fans and not studio people.  But I’ve put it on because it’s a new take.  It’s bittersweet for us to read such a well-thought-out pitch for a game.  As far as we know there are no Tremors games being considered at Universal.

Thanks — we like Burt, too!

Many fans have been asking this sort of question — and we appreciate it.  We work independently trying to get other projects going.  If we ever do, we might put in Easter Egg references or homages, since we love that sort of thing.  Ron Underwood directs many, many TV shows.   Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson keep writing and trying to sell new scripts.  Wilson is about to publish new Fraidy Cats book (called “Fraidy Cats, TOO!”)  But we have shut down Stampede as a company.  This website is now just an archive of info on our past projects — and a place for S. S. Wilson keep answering questions!

When we came up with graboids 30 years ago, you can be sure we never DREAMED we’d be asked questions like this.  But hey, I’m happy you’re all out there still wondering such things.  To be honest, when we did the series we did not have control or input over what the Sci-FI (SyFY) marketing department did.  We were way too busy getting the episodes written and shot.  I don’t think we ever even saw this reference.  However, in reading it now,  it sounds pretty logical!  I will quibble and say that shriekers and ABs look like they have skeletons, so I’m not sure the whole graboid life cycle belongs with mollusks.  But that’s probably already more than most of you want to know. Thanks for a rather science-heavy question!

Our logic is that graboids have a long life span, but also lie dormant for extended periods. So when they appeared in Perfection in 1990, it was the start of a new cycle.  So they began to appear in Mexico, Argentina, and other locations.

We totally agree with you. And, no, they’ve never said why, at least to us.

Thank you. We get asked this a lot in interviews and podcasts and such. We feel great about fans having made Tremors the success it is.  It is true that we didn’t think there’d even be Tremors 2.  But when Tremors 1 was a huge hit in the then-new VHS video rental business, that made T2  and all the rest possible.  We are grateful to all the fans that have stuck with us and supported the franchise, even while we’re sad not to be allowed to work on it any more.  It’s fun to be part of something that has lasted so long.

In our view the tentacles are attached far back  along the muscular walls of the creatures’ very long “throat,” past the circular opening they come out of.  They can fold very compactly, like a chameleon’s tongue, but the unfolding step happens before you see them start to emerge. When folded inside, we imagine they can ripple and flex, helping a graboid swallow very large prey, forcing it back past the tentacles into the stomach.

Uh, we can’t figure this one out.  But we want to answer every question if possible. Can anyone tell us which movie this refers to? Or can the person who submitted it give us more detaiils?

Here’s my (S.S.Wilson’s) theory: they smell like super rotten meat. Once in the army I had to carry out a huge pot of meat that had been forgotten for a long time in the back of the mess hall walk-in refrigerator and rotted. The smell was unforgettably awful. So that’s what I think of.

It’s an interesting question. I suppose one would expect that he wholly supported it. But Burt is also something of an isolationist, so might just as easily have felt it was meddling in world affairs that have nothing to do with the U.S.  So there you have it: a non-answer.

Absolutely!  Can you get them for us?!  And can you convince Universal to let us do it?!   Kidding aside, what a fabulous notion.  It’s great to have fans that dream bigger than we do!

Well… our only defense is that we just like writing strong, smart women.  Also we try to do movies that don’t have the standard cliches.

These are important questions for any survivalist with a mistrust of government.  Our feeling is Burt would like a PO Box, but has to settle for mail delivery (at least to Chang’s market) because Perfection itself is so isolated (he’d have to drive the 38 miles to Bixby just to get mail).  By the time of the TV series he has mellowed a bit and probably has a credit card or two.  But it’s also possible he leans on Jodi to order things through her store; and maybe she goes along with it — for a fee.  Win-win.

Okay, not exactly a question, but we enjoy fans thinking even bigger than we do, especially since we are barred from working on Tremors any more.  Clint Eastwood and Burt Gummer?  Come ON, Universal!

We did work with some developers on a video game.  Seems like it must have been Rock Solid, as I see references online to their plan to reveal a lab where super-graboids were being developed; and I do remember that.  We had several meetings there and saw various early animation and landscape demos.  We tossed in a few ideas, but they already had a solid concept building on things like having to be stealthy to sneak across ground and not “trigger” a graboid.  They were full steam ahead until, suddenly, we got word they’d gone under.  We heard several times that other companies were thinking of buying the assets and continuing the project, but nothing ever happened.

As I often do, I have to just step back and enjoy fan creativity.  We would have loved to attempt a film with all these elements, though  it might be a nightmare keeping all of it believable and logical.  It seems like the human characters would have to be trapped in some remote place, unable to escape, trying to survive while all the graboid forms happen, one after another — but I don’t get to work on Tremors any more, so I’ll stop there.

If I’d gotten that question back when I never dreamed Tremors would still be popular thirty years later, I’d have said no.  He’s too much fun as a character.  Even today, I don’t think we’d do it.  But if we were the ones still trying to come up with new plots and dramatic story ideas,  and if the studio swore up and down it was really, really the last Tremors film,  I guess we MIGHT consider it.  We’d have to have a long conversation with Micheal Gross first, though, to get his input.  So, I guess…. maybe.

The only reason they gave was they felt we didn’t have the experience to do low budget productions. But Tremors 2, 3, 4 and the series were all low budget productions.  We don’t have a theory about the real reasons.

Thanks for the kind comments.  We’ve been told that Tremors is actually used in some screen writing classes.  As to the other scripts, the issue is that a studio buys all rights to them forever, so technically we’re not allowed to release them, publish them, etc.  My hope is that they’ll leak onto the internet at some point (as have some of our other screenplays) , but I guess that hasn’t happened.

We appreciate these comments, though it is bittersweet to read them.  If you look at the answers to similar FAQs on our site, you’ll see that we were fired by Universal.  They do not want us to work on the movies. Not our choice.

When we were creating the sequels and series, we had fans and studio execs ask this question all the time.  But our answer was always the same: we don’t think it works — because an aquatic Graboid is really just a shark!

We hypothesize we’d say no.  We tried very hard to create a consistent, logical set of rules and to establish a carefully balanced tone of comedy vs scares.  Tremors 5, 6, and 7 destroyed those norms, so it would be impossible to construct something we believed in.

Yes, not really a question, but we wanted to post it anyway.  Thanks!

As we keep saying, “Thirty years later and we’re STILL getting new questions!” We never thought about this.  But it’s surely the first thing any American hunter would have asked.  Our theory is, based on the strong smell and extremely powerful musculature, Graboid meat probably doesn’t taste very good and is extremely tough.  Maybe it would be okay made into sausage with lots of added spices.   Shriekers are technically young, so, maybe, a little better.  ABs are clearly very stringy and lean, so likely are not appetizing.  They’ be like eating crow or vulture.

Tremors 2 was shot in the hills just southwest of Magic Mountain.  The refinery set was in a secluded valley in those hills. Also,  I remember that we could see Route 126 from the location of the rock that Earl and Grady crash into.  Sorry, can’t be much more specific.  Long time ago!

I may have answered this elsewhere, but the question comes up a lot from fans bothered by Universal’s handling of Tremors.  In Hollywood, unlike in book publishing or in theater, the studios long ago figured out that they wanted exclusive control over material.  You can ask to withhold or retain some rights, but only the most mega-powerful writers would ever have a chance of getting such a contract. The standard contract,  which we signed when we sold Tremors, states that we are selling all rights for all media that exist (or are invented in the future) for all time. So you just have to hope you aren’t thrown off your own creation, which we eventually were.

She chose not to.  We asked her to come back for Tremors 2 but she declined, so we had to write her out of the script.  Since her character was gone from T2, we left it that way for T3.

You have correctly guessed that Universal is in charge, and to our knowledge has never released those sound tracks.  We imagine you are aware that there are unofficial versions floating around online.

We are glad to hear that it is hard to choose among the ones we worked on.  Tremors 1 does have a special place for all of us because it was first, we had a bigger budget, has our full original cast, and seems to stand the test of time well.  But they are all our “babies” and we don’t want to choose!

Not really.  We thought about each “death” a lot.  And if you think about it, not that many main characters die in the first four Tremors movies and series.  The hardest one was the decision to have Miguel die in Tremors 3.  Amusingly, Tony Genaro, who plays Miguel was totally on board with the idea and loved the emotional quality it would have even though it meant he couldn’t come back!

We experimented with a lot of things during the early days of the Stampede site.  We have to admit we don’t remember what this link was, or if or when it was active.  The idea, of course, would have been to give fans another route to more info about beloved Burt.  But as Stampede scaled back, the link no doubt got left behind, too.  Fortunately, fans themselves have taken up the cause and a search for Burt Gummer gets lots of hits these days!

Well, not funny for the graboid, which would surely lose in that situation, given that  Banner (The Hulk) is a much more powerful, if far more unrealistic, comic book creation.

We seem to be having a run on franchise-blending questions.  While it is true that a graboid might inadvertently swallow a gun, we did not write Men in Black and cannot predict what Agent K might do if faced with that situation.

As we sadly have to keep pointing out, we are interested in anything that takes advantage of Tremors’ notoriety.  But we do not have any say in what Universal studios does with the property.  Over the years they have never followed up on the many ideas like this that have been proposed.

This is a comment/question we’ve been getting a lot since Tremors 5 came out.  We very much appreciate how many fans have been riled up by our being taken off the movies.  But there’s not much anyone can do about it.  It’s standard old school Hollywood legal.  You sell the rights to your screenplay outright forever.  After that the studio can do whatever it wants.

Someday fans will have to explain to us what the fascination is with various creatures battling various other creatures.   There are other permutations of this question all over the faq area.  But we’ll take a stab at this one.  Stumpy, the injured graboid from T-1, would possibly be at a disadvantage in a battle with El Blanco from T-3.  On the other hand, El Blanco from being an atypical graboid, might be fearful of a confrontation with a “normal” one and try to flee.  There.  No answer.

Again, not a question, but an inventive if somewhat outlandish example of how far our supportive fans have gone in trying to figure out ways for us to keep working on Tremors-like-things.

The possibility still seems so unlikely that we’ve not given it much thought. It would be additionally frustrating to have to deal with, or ignore, all problems created and rules broken by the sequels after T4.  Unless and until it really might happen, we will continue to not give it much thought.

Chang’s is around 250-300 miles North of Las Vegas.  As for graboid incursions, the Perfection graboids were hemmed in by rocks and mountains, but theoretically graboids can exist in any sandy desert if ABs can find the right places to lay eggs, so a Primm take-over is not out of the question.  We have implied that graboid eggs need a warm environment, like that provided by hot springs, so they are somewhat limited in where they can hatch.

We did not catch that particular show.  Tremors seems to be referenced a LOT these days, which is gratifying.  Recently saw [Sept. 2021] a claymation ad for Rick and Morty on Adult Swim that had a graboid!

Well… another interesting idea.  It would probably work.  If, say a coyote were very sensitive to graboids moving beneath it and repeatedly avoided being ambushed from below; the graboid might resort to this tactic to lure the coyote closer without tipping off it’s underground location.

We don’t think so.  While we never showed the whole transformation, a shrieker builds a sort of a cocoon around itself, like a caterpillar, and morphs into a AB.  So it’s not a violent process.

Versions of this question has come up remarkably often over the years.  While we appreciate that UK citizens would love their own local graboids, it does seem to us hard to explain how the creatures would have remained hidden in a country so densely populated for so many centuries.  And of course, we don’t control the franchise any longer so it’s a bit moot from that perspective.

This, of course, is a recurring fan question.  We at Stampede appreciate the loyalty, but as far as we know Universal plans to continue making sequels without our input.

Okay, not really a FAQ, but it made us laugh here at Stampede.  Thanks!

Thanks for the thanks!  But to be clear, Stampede did not break up.  We are still all working together trying to get projects off the ground.  Yes, today’s film business is very different from when we started, but we haven’t given up!

All of us at Stampede have done these sorts of events over the years.   But we don’t regularly go to places like Comic Con.  We have no events on our schedules at present. (April 2022)

The Stampede team has a few pieces of memorabilia from the films.  Not actual props.  More just things that were used in advertising, etc.  As far as we know Universal has not kept anything.

Well, an old screenplay adage says characters are best when they are in conflict. But Nancy grew out the hippies and “flower children” we knew in our generation (1960s). We just liked the idea that she’s always a little Pollyanna, is anti-violence, believes in things like pyramid power, etc.  Sorry you don’t like her, but we always felt she’s another sort of person who might end up out in isolated Perfection — a great opposite of Burt!

We always thought of Nancy as a hippie when we created the characater.  Marcia just played that side up a bit more, or in a different way, than Charlotte.

The graboid life cycle is quite unusual. Graboids (the large worm form in Tremors 1) grow from large eggs. They fairly rapidly achieve full size and from that standpoint might be considered the adults of the species. But in fact they are technically more akin to larvae in other creatures.  After a time, and it’s not clear what triggers this event, graboids slow and die and burst open, being eaten from within by several shriekers, much smaller bipedal creatures whose only purpose is to eat as much as possible and multiply as fast as possible (through non-sexual spontaneous hermaphroditic reproduction).  They were featured in Tremors 2.  Any shrieker that survives long enough eventually forms a cocoon from which emerges a winged animal dubbed an Ass Blaster by Jodi Chang of Perfection (Tremors 3). ABs can glide long distances after launching themselves into the air via a blast of reactive chemicals fired from their hind quarters, hence the graphic name. They are “born” with a graboid egg already inside, and as quickly as possible they seek out appropriate places to lay it, primarily areas with  geothermic activity (like hot springs). When graboids hatch from the eggs, the cycle starts anew.

No. We love the fairly family friendly niche we fell into.

We admit we have not watched all the, tributes, clips, first-time-views etc that proliferate on YouTube.  That said, since you mention it, we at Stampede were all quite impressed with Dead Meat’s Kill Count episodes on the first four Tremors.  They cover the movies in extraordinary detail, with much (mostly accurate) trivia and very clever writing/editing.  Fully entertaining in their own right.

We are very proud of the music in Tremors 1-4, and would love for that to happen.  But Universal Studios controls all rights.  As far as we know they have no plans to release sound track versions.

We are aware that this has been accomplished in certain rare circumstances, but it is a long and difficult legal process even to attempt it, so it isn’t something we feel we want to put much effort into.  We’re all busy with other projects.

It may seem like graboids pursue only humans in the movies, but in fact we tried to imply that they do hunt other prey.  Miguel’s cattle.  Old Fred’s sheep. The coyote in Tremors 2.  As to the second point, graboids would avoid cities just due to the sheer noise level.  It would be impossible for them to isolate and attack anything when there’s a steady cacophony of cars, trucks, cycles, pedestrians, etc. coming from all directions.

Technically, there is only one type of graboid, the large worm-like creature.  It starts out as an egg, which must be kept warm in order to hatch.  I grows to its full size of around 30 feet fairly quickly, but is pretty deadly even as a “baby” graboid.   After a time, and for reasons still a bit unclear, graboids then go through a transformation.  They metamorphose into much smaller shriekers (Tremors 2) that literally eat their way out of the parent worm, killing it.  These hermaphroditic critters procreate quite rapidly and can become a dangerous carnivorous herd.  But at some point, shriekers undergo a second metamorphosis, changing into assblasters (Tremors 3), a winged version capable of launching itself and gliding.  Each assblaster carries one egg and seeks out a appropriate spot to lay it, usually in or near naturally warm places like volcanic hot springs.  It is unclear how long the eggs then lay dormant before hatching.

At first we were going to say, no, that didn’t happen.  But when we examined the history we built into Tremors 4, we had to admit: Walter is a descendant of the original store’s owners, and Miguel is probably related to Juan Pedilla, and Burt did in fact inherit money from his grandfather Hiram’s silver mine.  So, while we think Burt definitely lived other places and did other things (before becoming a prepper and returning), it’s possible he did spend time as a kid in Perfection!  You changed our minds!

No.  Audiences have gotten used to that and, we suppose, expect it these days.  But we are of an earlier filmmaker generation and made Tremors just the way we wanted it.  We still like the horror-comedy balance we created.

We are surprised that Universal seems to allow anyone to show any part of the movies for free all the time.  We don’t own the rights, so that’s their call.   But we are huge fans of Kill Count and thought they did an awesome job of both making fun of, and giving tons of off-beat trivia about the movies.

We don’t control the rights to the franchise.  But you may have have seen online (Feb 2023) that Kevin Bacon has publicly stated his interest in doing something new with Tremors.  That’s a change from how he felt about the movie earlier in his career, so we guess one could say anything might happen.

Actually, we feel we’ve shown, or implied, that graboids hunt a wide range of things.  In Tremors Miguel mentions some of his cattle are missing, and they eat Old Fred’s sheep.   In Tremors 2, the graboids eat a howling coyote (off screen) while Earl and Grady listen.    But graboids are pretty rare, and their interactions with humans relatively infrequent, so we feel, no, they haven’t learned, as a species, that humans are potentially dangerous.  Fans often ask about graboids coming to big cities, but they’d be very confused by all the constant noise and would be unable to hunt effectively, so would likely choose to avoid any urban environment.

In our original script for Tremors 5 we had a sequence we liked where Burt has to face the mini graboids (first seen in Tremors 4).  There is a swarm of them, and he guns them down using a 6 barreled super-rapid-fire machine gun, that he fires from the top of a careening Land Rover as he and two other characters try to out run the beasties.

We also had many ideas over the years for how we’d bring back Kevin Bacon as Val if that ever happened.

We wish we could ask Rhonda. We feel graboids is correct. It’s how they are referred to in Tremors 2. But we’d be curious to hear fan opinions!

Well, Blood Beach predates Tremors by nearly 10 years, so I’m afraid we’d have to say it’s the other way around (if there were a Blood Beachverse). We don’t remember seeing it back in the day, but looking at it now, certainly the shots of people getting pulled under the sand are very similar to Tremors.

Graboids prefer to stay in their element: loose dirt. It’s difficult for them to move in the open. So if a graboid did happen to poke its beak into a cave, it would mostly likely back up and go another way. Another consideration: caves tend to form in solid rock, not in alluvial soil, so graboids would rarely encounter them anyway.

We checked the game out after getting this FAQ. Yes, it certainly looks Tremors inspired! But of course there were sand worms and underground critters that predated our movies. There’s even a really old TV show called Outer Limits that had a sand-shark like monster – “Invisible Enemy.”

We tend not to be fans of mash-ups. We liked creating a world where the only super strange thing is the graboids and everything else is played straight. If a whole city were on the run from Godzilla, seems like graboids would be only a minor annoyance.

That’s a tough one. Add lots of sound-proofing to your house?

We hope so, but we are never told anything about Universal’s plans for the franchise. It was Arrow who let us know that Tremors 2 was being done.

The creatures for Tremors 1, 2, and 3 were designed, built and operated by the team at Amalgamated Dynamics.
sudioadi.com

The creatures for Tremors 4 were built and operated by KNB EFX.
knbefx.com

Our bad dreams are about Hollywood rejecting our scripts.

As we’ve said many times in this FAQ, we don’t own or control the rights to Tremors and have no say in what Universal does with the franchise. Over the years we have been approached multiple times by people wanting to produce comics, board games and video games, but always have to tell them to contact Universal and “good luck.” Since S. S. Wilson mostly writes novels now, he might be interested in some sort of expansion of the world in book form.

We wouldn’t agree that the graboids of Tremors 1 have a distinct music cue of their own. Certainly not something like the shark of Jaws. In any case, we strove to give each sequel it’s own definitive music.

Wow, a long but very science-based question! Not having kept up with the literature, we’ll make some educated guesses. ABs are the primary way that the species spreads to other locales, given that the shrieker stage is fairly short. Yes, graboids have the “seeds” of shriekers in them from the start. It isn’t clear what triggers the transformation (age? environmental factors?). We don’t think shriekers carry eggs. They probably pass on some sort of stem cell when they metamorphose into ABs, and those cells then differentiate into eggs. Yes, it does seem all these creatures are clones, so how they maintain genetic diversity is a mystery. However, there are examples in nature of creatures that reproduce asexually yet still maintain that diversity, so graboids must fall into those groups.

The creature puppets for Tremors 1, 2, and 3 were made by the FX company Amalgamated Dynamics. For Tremors 4 they were made by KNB EFX.

Having no control at all over Tremors, we’ve long been dismayed at what we consider lost opportunities for marketing and expanding the franchise. Yes, in that alternate universe we’d be interested in supporting novelizations — but it’s not our call.

Okay, it’s not a question, but it’s such a nice thought we thought we’d share it!

While Burt does tend to lean toward “wipe them out,” he does so because he feels he sees threats more clearly than others. That said, we think he’d guardedly agree with your proposal. In T3 an AB was sent to Las Vegas (where it is hopefully being studied). And he has somewhat reluctantly made his peace with the protection of El Blanco.

Somewhat unexpectedly, no. Comfortable financially (due to inheritance of Hiram Gummer’s silver mine), once he drifted into a prepper mindset, he did all his own research and training in weaponry and survival.

Yes, not a question, but many of you have used the Stampede FAQ over the years to comment about simply enjoying the movies. We’ve seen many about sharing with grandparents, sharing with kids, even weathering hard times or loss of loved ones. So we’d like to take a break from questions to say thanks for all those kind remarks and stories!

Surprisingly (to us) this question comes up a lot. Sorry that we really can’t track down what watches the prop departments got for our actors all those years ago except for the Storm Navigator Michael Gross wears in T3. Unless a prop is important to the story, often times the decision is left up the the prop people and/or actors feelings about what their characters would wear.

Here again, as with the Storm Navigator, we always appreciate input from fans who happen to recognize a given watch!

We made it a point that Hiram swears the townsfolk to secrecy, in order to explain why no one in the Perfection of 1990s knows about graboids. That said, no, it has never occurred to us to figure out a way for Burt to learn the history. Could have made a great series episode!

The answer is simply that we always try to be realistic, even with fantasy creatures. They are just animals, not magical or supernatural. So you can have your characters sometimes get away with things. Even in T1 Val impulsively punches a tentacle and it works. (And was a great ad-lib by Kevin Bacon, btw). Somebody could probably punch or kick a shrieker, but the circumstance would have to be right.

Speaking only for SS Wilson, I’d love to see Reba McEntire and Finn Carter back. What have Heather and Rhonda been doing all this time?

Our feeling is Melvin only later realized how right Walter was about the marketing. Might have been fun to have him claiming he invented the term in T3 or the series. But his aims were real estate oriented, not graboid oriented, so maybe he wouldn’t care.

That’d be the simple version, but not exactly. Ron Underwood, SS Wilson, Brent Maddock and Nancy Roberts had an awful time agreeing on a name when formed the company. We discussed and discarded ideas endlessly until one of our staff, frustrated by all the wrangling, said something like, “You know what? You all like western ideas. There’s a stampede in City Slickers (which Ron had directed) and Val yells Stampede in Tremors. Why not that?” And we finally agreed.

Yes.

Yes, that idea was incorporated in the original script. They were larger and had more coloration, if I remember right. And yes, we think it’s fun to imagine how graboids might change in different environments.

We actually try to think about these things. Here’s the explanation. When moving normally a graboid uses echo-location to identify things around it, like a cliff. In the case of the graboid in Tremors 1, however, it is “stampeding” wildly because it is in pain from the bomb Val throws. As Rhonda says, “They’re so sensitive to sound they gotta run!” In its desperation, it then can’t stop itself in time.

We get quite a few questions asking us to compare Tremors creatures to those in other movies. To be honest, we don’t keep up with every movie monster as assiduously as some of our fans apparently do. So we generally can’t answer or have no significant opinion to offer.

We asked him to star in Tremors 2. But Tremors 1 had not done well when it first came out and he didn’t want to be in a sequel. Many years later, he has come to enjoy that Tremors ultimately became a cult favorite.

Of course! But you’d probably have to be really good at it. Graboids are a lot smaller and probably hear better than the enormous Dune worms.

It’s not ridiculous. But the answer is a mystery that only Universal studios can answer. They simply never pursued these things. A video game was in development around the time we did Tremors 2, but the company making it went under and no other company picked up the game to finish it.

Well, the site posts them newest first, since I guess website designers think that’s how most people would expect it. I’m not tech savvy enough to know if there’s a way to see them another way.

Well, I guess we can’t ignore a question about an article SS Wilson wrote in a nearly 50 year old movie magazine. We did not work on or have any credit on Land of the Lost. Only wrote that article about the show. So would have had no right or calling card to pitching it to anyone.

Here’s a memory of Fred that I don’t think I’ve shared elsewhere. He was a very adventurous world traveler and he seemed to rate exotic places partly by how dangerous they were. He had a funny expression he often used. He’d say, “Marseilles’s pretty good. You can get in real trouble in Marseilles.” Then he’d just smile, leaving you to wonder what sort of trouble he meant. No, I didn’t ask, afraid I’d sound as naive as I actually am.

The festival is very impromptu, has no budget, and basically is put on by volunteers. That said, we very much agree that video of the panels would be a great thing for those who can’t make it. I’m told the organizers are looking into ways to try to make it happen. So fingers crossed.

It is just three: graboid, then shrieker, then AB. The ABs lay eggs (seeking out earth warmed by hot springs) and graboids hatch from the eggs — sometimes a very long time later.

That’s a fun thing to think about. We’d like to say it’s a pretty long time, maybe similar to how long some snakes can go without eating — which can be months. A related question we answered is: do graboids need water? If so, how to they get it? We’re not sure about that!

That’s a lovely thought, but while our fans are very loyal, Tremors doesn’t have the gigantic followings of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. We doubt it would be feasible to build Perfection and expect it to be as successful as Hobbiton in New Zealand.

As we announced at Tremors Fest Santa Fe in October 2024, we are not interested in remaking Tremors. We are in discussions about what to do with the rights to the original script, but are hope to pursue some sort of sequel, not a remake. That aside we’d always love to do effects practically as much as possible, but there will be pressure to augment with computer graphics, so that’ll be an ongoing discussion if anything happens.

It is not likely. We have only the rights to the original Tremors script, not any of the sequels that were written later.

We think it’s probable that the human activities you suggest could possibly cause a hatch by disturbing the eggs. We admit it’s a little limiting to say it’s ONLY hot springs that cause hatches.

When you sell a screenplay, there is no other option than to sell all rights for all time. Such studio contracts have been set in stone since the beginning of movies. There are super rare exceptions where a writer (like say J.K. Rowling) has huge power and can keep control of some rights — but we were nowhere near that category when we sold Tremors. It was only a little-known part of US copyright law that allowed us to get back our rights (after 30 years) to the original script.

Well, graboids benefit from the fact that the temperature below ground does not vary as much or as fast as surface temperature. In very cold weather a graboid could just “dive” say 20ft down and stay comfortable.