Trivia / Lights Out (2016)

• Author's Saving Throw: David Sandburg intended it to be just one standalone story with no thought toward sequels, but then started writing one entirely because of the Focus Group Ending inadvertently giving the message that depressed people should kill themselves.
• Creator Backlash: David Sandburg felt the Focus Group Ending ultimately hurt the film more than it helped.
• Development Hell: Sanberg announced he was worked on a sequel less than a year after the film released, but nothing has been said about it since.
• DVD Commentary: Sandberg wasn't approached to do a commentary on the film when it was released on Blu-Ray; as a way to compensate for that, he and his wife Lotta made their own, which one can listen to while watching the film right here (Sandberg has instructions at the beginning to let the listener know when to start the commentary).
• Fake American: Teresa Palmer, who plays Rebecca, is Australian.
• Focus Group Ending: The original version was about 10 minutes longer but was cut out due to negative audience reaction. In both versions, Sophie kills herself to sever Diana's only link to the physical world, but in the extended ending it didn't actually work so her family had to put Diana down another way. Focus groups rejected it as it made the suicide feel pointless, though with the unfortunate side effect of the new ending appearing to advocate people with depression killing themselves. Sandberg was so disturbed that he promptly set out to make a sequel to undo the unfortunate implications.
• Real-Life Relative: David F. Sandberg's wife, actress Lotta Losten, plays Esther in the opening scene. (Losten had also appeared as the unnamed protagonist in the original short film.)
• What Could Have Been: Sandberg has an early treatment for the film available on his website, which is different in many ways from the final product. Notably, Diana is outright said to be a demon feeding on grief, and the ending is closer to what Sandberg originally planned before the Focus Group Ending was decided upon.

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