Riverdale stars Madelaine Petsch, Lili Reinhart, and Camila Mendes reunite at The Strangers: Chapter 1 premiere

Last year, Harlan told Entertainment Weekly about the process of casting Petsch and her costar Froy Gutierrez. "We looked long and hard for our scream queen,” he said. “When I spoke with Madelaine I just knew that she was an exceptional person, exceptional actor, and that's what it took to play this part. In the same way, after looking long and hard, we found Froy Gutierrez, who is another wonderful young actor. We wanted a couple who feel natural and relaxed together. Their relationship, maybe it's not identical to the relationship in the original film, but it's something that feels very natural and very real, and that to me was the key to this movie and this trilogy. It's the realism.”

The filmmaker, who also helmed films like Deep Blue Sea and Die Hard 2, said that shooting all three films back to back was “the challenge of a lifetime.”

“On a Monday morning, I could be shooting the second chapter, and Monday afternoon I could be shooting the first chapter, and Tuesday morning I could be shooting the third chapter,” he told EW. “It was incredibly demanding for the actors, for the continuity in terms of the make-up and wardrobe, and for my director of photography, because we wanted to create a visual language that develops so that the movies get bigger, more epic, as we go [on]. It just kept all of our juices pumping all the time."