The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates our Directors on Directing panel with Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, David Leitch, and Wes Ball.
The filmmakers discuss the behind-the-scenes of directing, the massive collaboration it takes to get movies to the screen, stunts, VFX, and answer questions from surprise creatives in the business.
They also share teases, updates, and anecdotes from each of their upcoming blockbusters,
Abigail
,
The Fall Guy
, and
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
.

For WonderCon 2024, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to moderate another Directors on Directing panel where we hosted Radio Silence — Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Scream 6) — David Leitch (Bullet Train), and Wes Ball (The Maze Runner) ahead of the release of some of this year’s hottest blockbusters. Between this quartet of filmmakers, this year’s panel ran the gamut of genres, from the bloodbath that is Abigail, to Leitch’s love letter to stunt performers in The Fall Guy, and the epic return to the sci-fi franchise in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

During their conversation, the four directors share the behind-the-scenes of filmmaking and demystify the collaboration process between a director and “the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that are making choices” throughout production. They walk us through the miracles it takes to get a movie into theaters and even discover techniques and hurdles from each other. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, “What exactly does a director do?” this panel is for you. There are even a handful of famous faces and Hollywood insiders who send in questions, including Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), The Fall Guy’s Emily Blunt, Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers), Bear McCreary (composer The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) and Greig Fraser (cinematographer of Dune and The Batman).

In addition to the peak behind the Hollywood curtain, each director shares some exciting updates on their upcoming projects. We find out just how bloody Abigail really is, and how their multi-talented young star, Alisha Weir (Matilda the Musical) changed the film; Leitch talks about why The Fall Guy is so personal to him and how the release and success of Barbie has impacted his film; and Ball dives into the technical and practical aspects of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, where it falls on the timeline, and working with extended VFX shots.

Don’t worry if you missed out on WonderCon this year (or if you just want to relive the panel)! You can check out the full conversation for all of this and tons more in the video above, or in the transcript below.

It Takes a Miracle To Get Movies on the Big Screen
“It’s just arts and crafts.”
Image via Entertainment Weekly

COLLIDER: What do you think would surprise this audience to learn about being a director in Hollywood?

DAVID LEITCH: It probably doesn’t surprise you that it’s a lot of fun, but it is a ton of pressure. But it’s high-class problems. The analogy is that you have this vision of what you want the movie to be, and it’s a bag of marbles. Then, you dump that bag of marbles on the table and there are people trying to shove the marbles off the table, and you’re trying to pull it all together. So, it’s a lot of compromise and a lot of flow and a lot of patience. It’s not a singular moment or vision that you have. You’ve gotta ride the wave.

WES BALL: I think one thing that surprised me after making my first movie was after I got through that process and all the, “The truck is in the shot,” or, “The sun’s going down,” or it starts to rain on us, all these crazy pressures that are constantly against you, it’s a miracle that anything comes out the other end that works. After you’ve done it, I can’t be negative towards any movie anymore because I understand the meat grinder of making a movie. So that’s kind of the big surprising thing for me was just the sheer effort to make something that even remotely works onscreen.

LEITCH: 100%.

TYLER GILLETT: We get to sit up here as directors, but we’re just the tip of a funnel. The thing that is always a surprise to us is how a movie is only as good as the worst choice that’s made in it.

BALL: That’s true.

GILLETT: There’s so many people making choices, and we lean so heavily on so many people to make something great. Eventually, we get presented with all these great options and you get to pick and choose what ultimately ends up in the movie. But we’re just the mouthpiece for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that are making choices that are far smarter and more interesting than we probably are that really contribute to the movie becoming what it is.

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN: They’re very handmade, to that point. We talk about it as arts and crafts all the time. As an audience, I sometimes watch movies I have nothing to do with and it feels like they’re put through a machine. In reality, they’re a thousand little choices made by a thousand people who are just trying to do something together. It’s just arts and crafts, and we’re kids at a much higher level.

GILLETT: Hearing you talk about the mo-cap experience, I think there’s this idea that you kick back with your feet up behind a monitor and everything gets recorded, and then you sort of choose the coverage in post. But even that, at the highest technical level, is still handmade. You’re still making choices in the moment.

How Is Technology Changing the Course of Moviemaking?

Technology is changing behind the scenes all the time. I think a lot of people probably realize that Gareth Edwards, who did The Creator, used a camera you can buy at Best Buy for, like, $3,000, which is amazing. What have you guys seen behind the scenes technology-wise, whether it be cameras, CGI, whatever, that you are excited to use in the future, or just something you want to tease the audience?

BALL: Well, I’ve just spent over a year working with, I think, the best visual effects company in the world. So, that’s a very humbling experience to see the boundaries they’re pushing in terms of the CG side of things. I think there’s interesting things happening on the exhibition side of things, like things like the Vision Pro and that experience of watching a movie IMAX-scale in your living room, which is kind of really amazing. For me personally, what’s happening in the game space, like how this merger between the graphical stuff with Unreal Engine, for instance, and the final image. That’s gonna be real exciting in the next couple of years. I think when small indie productions can do massively huge, immersive world creation stuff for cheap, that’s gonna be really exciting. Very much like Gareth Edwards did, where he crafted a big otherworldly science fiction thing, but did it on a very different kind of process on a small, indie level. That’s exciting to me. I think we all kind of agree, we’d love for movies to be cheaper so that we can take more risks, do more unique kinds of things. I think that movies should get cheaper, and I think that technology will help us get there.

We should also mention you were working with Wētā for [Kingdom of the Planet of the] Apes.

BALL: Yes, Wētā FX. I guess I’m bias, but they are the best in the world.

LEITCH: They’re great.

BALL: Wait until you see some of the stuff they’ve done. It’s amazing.

LEITCH: I’ll double down on some of that. I think the immersive experience and where cinema is going to meet that sort of VR, is it going to be a hybrid at first? How are we gonna tell stories in that world? That’s really exciting to me. Again, as a storyteller you want to figure out how you can still guide the audience and create these characters and this world, but to have it so immersive is exciting. We’re just touching on how we’re gonna tells stories in that space, but it’s exciting.

BALL: It’s a new frontier.

GILLETT: I think even in just the 2D animation space, I feel like just from Ready or Not to Abigail, the effects that we’ve been doing, which are all really simple comparatively to the stuff that you guys are doing, but the ability to create photorealistic flies, smoke, things that just give a sense of texture, of realism, those things were so hard to do even just six years ago. Or so expensive to do, and that’s really shifted in the last few years because of Nuke and Unreal Engine, and all that stuff.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: It just lets you get back to the basics of storytelling. I think all of this wonderful technology that’s happening will allow us to do more of that at a cost that isn’t a giant risk that just lets us be weirder.

Hear From Those “Hundreds and Hundreds” of Other Creatives
Some familiar names from different departments chime in with questions for our panel.
Image via Universal Pictures

BEAR MCREARY: Hey, gang! Bear McCreary here. I’ve got a question for all of you. You’ve all worked with some pretty amazing composers over the years, and that means you’ve heard what the rest of us don’t get to hear. You’ve heard all the various drafts that the composers come up with before they finally arrive at the scores that the rest of us get to hear. I’m curious, what is the most surprising thing that you’ve ever heard in a composer’s first draft for one of your movies?

LEITCH: Wow. So the last few films I’ve been working with Dominic Lewis, who’s an incredible composer, and he often writes a suite of music before the movie gets going. For Bullet Train, we had a particular sequence where Bad Bunny was playing this character, The Wolf, and I wanted to do this sort of music video story of his life from the moment he’s a kid to the time we see him on the train. Dom, who’s not only just a great composer, he’s an incredible songwriter, he writes this song and sings it in Spanish, even though he’s a Brit. It was so inspired that I couldn’t find anyone to replace it. Finally, we had to get a real Flamenco-type singer in there, but it was so hard to get Dom’s voice out of there. We were playing it on set, and even Bad Bunny was like, “This is incredible. This song is amazing.” We ended up getting Alejandro Sanz, who’s an incredible vocalist, and he made it his own. But just to see the collaboration of making a movie, you have all these artists that are just giving 110% making you look good. Dom is one of those exceptional artists that I have been blessed to work with.

BALL: For me, I’ve worked with John Paesano for four movies — actually four and a half, I guess, if you count one that didn’t make it — and he does the same thing where he creates a lot of suites up front. John is cool because we’ve known each other for so long that I’ll just pitch him the movie before he even has a script and he’ll start noodling on themes and all that kind of stuff. It is surprising the themes that are like, “Whoa, no, that’s totally not right,” which is good to know sometimes. Then he’ll do one little theme sometimes, and it’s like, “That’s it.” It kind of inspires me while I’m shooting or editing and then we use it to kind of mold the movie. I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to approach scene construction very musically. There’s a rhythm to it. There’s a beginning, middle, and end to it all. Even if the music gets cut out, by the way, it helps me just in terms of the flow of a scene. So, music’s crucial. It’s a fun part of the process.

GILLETT: Yeah, it’s the cheat code. We talk about that all the time. You’re like, “What is this movie?” And then you hear the music, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s just a long music video.” [Laughs] We’ve had the opportunity to work with Brian Tyler now on four movies. The great Brian Tyler. Our experience has been a little different with Brian. We typically are mostly finished shooting by the time we hear his music.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We trust him a lot. We usually end up hearing his full score in our final mix. So, it’s very late. I think every time in the process, the people we’re working with in sound say something like, “You guys haven’t heard this yet? That’s weird.” And every time we go, “Wow, this is great.” [Laughs] Then, at most, we tinker some things. We move around some stuff to make it fit. But he very much gets our vibe, and he kind of just lands that plane for us.

Related ‘Fast X’ Composer Brian Tyler on How the Sequel is a “Gamechanger” & “One of the Most Complex” Scores He’s Created Tyler also discusses hiding secrets in ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ soundtrack, designing Jason Momoa’s ‘Fast & Furious’ theme, and more!

GILLETT: Do you guys temp with composer’s music?

BALL: I was just about to ask how you guys deal with temp music.

GILLETT: We temp with music that just exists. I’m sure we’ve probably temped with music from your guys’ movies before.

BALL: I do that, too, and it’s dangerous.

GILLETT: It’s dangerous and it’s hard because then you fall in love with it and you have to train your ear differently.

BALL: You’re like, “It only works because of this one thing!” So, I tried very hard on this last one to just not use temp music, and of course, that only lasts for so long. You need something in there to judge. That’s always a challenge.

LEITCH: I try to use Dom’s suites or Dom’s history of music.\

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Have you guys ever previewed a movie with your actual score?

BALL: Pieces of it, yeah.

LEITCH: Yeah.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We’ve never had that experience.

BALL: In our case it’s such a long process, our post process, that he’s already kind of started to work on the themes and stuff. Testing things thematically, I think, is fun to see, “Is it working for people?”

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Sounds great. [Laughs]

BALL: People don’t realize in the mixing of a movie how much can actually change. If you’re a soundtrack geek like me, you’ll know a movie’s score that you’ve watched a thousand times, and then you get the disk, and it’s not quite the same. Usually, that’s the case, because we’re either pulling sounds out or we’re doing edits, and all that kind of stuff to just make it fit the scene. That’s always another of those collaboration things that just needs to happen. It’s amazing in the edit, adding two or three frames sometimes makes a huge difference. Shifting a music track a second to the left or right makes a huge difference. So it’s all these little micro details and micro choices that makes up the movie.

Image via Sony

GILLETT: That’s a part of the process I wish more people had access to. I feel like it’s such a closed door, the sound stage, but that last three percent is when the movie becomes a movie.

LEITCH: It’s transformative.

BALL: It can mess it up or help it.

GILLETT: Yeah, you can break it really quickly. [Laughs]

COLIN TREVORROW: Hey, guys. I know we’re all really hard on ourselves as filmmakers, brutal sometimes, and it’s hard to admit we’ve ever done anything right at all. Is there anything, one moment from any of your films, one scene where you’ve been up late and you saw it on TBS, nobody was around, and you were just like, “Man, that was dope?”

BALL: I have a couple. I think you guys have made more movies than I have, but I’m always surprised when a scene that you’re so sure was not going to work comes together. There’s also some things, which we talked about earlier, with the execution, and I really enjoy the execution of a scene or a shot. I had an accident with one of my actors, Dylan [O’Brien], who I’m sure a lot of you know. When we had to go back and reshoot, we decided we weren’t going to do any moving vehicles at all. We weren’t gonna put him back on there. So, how do we do a giant car chase, which is the opening of the last Maze Runner movie, [The Death Cure]. “How do we do a giant car chase with no moving vehicles?” So we just came up with this approach using the great tools of what Wētā FX can do and good camera work, and we figured out how to do a cool little sequence that is basically full CG except for the actor in a car in a parking lot. I was really surprised it worked as well as it did, and I always look back at that as kind of a proud thing that we did that was kind of necessary on a personal level. It was something we wanted to do, but also on a technical level. I was proud of that.

LEITCH: That’s a great sequence. We were talking about it backstage. It’s really impressive. Deadpool 2 was a really great experience for me working with Ryan Reynolds and really getting to hone some comedic chops. There’s a scene, that little legs scene where he’s on the couch. We had the pages and we’d been going through the pages for weeks, and I’m like, “It’s a lot of people telling a lot of jokes.” It’s hard to land that plane tonally because it’s so absurd, but again, you’re playing in a world like Deadpool. I learned a lot editorially of distilling it down to just, really, the essence of the comedic beats. It was such a learning thing for me. Then, when I see that scene and I see how effective it is and how ridiculous we thought it was, but we went for it, and the how effective it is to that film and setting up those characters… I’m really proud of that scene. It’s sort of my comedic moment.

Image via 20th Century Fox

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: I’d say sometimes I’ll catch our early stuff, like Southbound and V/H/S, anthologies that we did 10-plus years ago. There’s something about it, and when I watch it now, having made bigger movies, and we made those for, like, a few thousand dollars, I like watching them and going, “Oh, right, that’s what I love about this. That’s what we love about this.”

GILLETT: Yeah, the philosophy still exists regardless of how big.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Yeah, and making sure that we pull that with us as we make bigger movies. Just seeing some of the stuff we pulled off with friends and a shitty little camera, and running around at night with no permits and no anything, and being proud of it. Going, “Hell yeah, we tried to do that and it worked.” It feels good.

LEITCH: It did work.

GILLETT: I’d say for me it’s the bodies exploding in Ready or Not. I think it’s because there was so much riding on that working. It was, I think, our third day — third day of photography on the movie. So, that movie was really front-loaded with the hardest shit. It was a practical effect, which means you don’t get more than one go at it in a practical space. There was so much pressure on us to make sure that it got pulled off the way that was in our heads. Watching it and having it work at all, and knowing what was at stake in just those first few days, it just feels really good.

DAMON LINDLEOF: Hey there. I’m Damon. I’m a big fan of all your work, and my question is about social media and feedback. X, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is the kids are using these days — do you use it? Do you look at what people are saying about your stuff? What’s your relationship with it? Do you think it’s super-duper toxic or helpful? Asking for a friend.

GILLETT: First of all, Damon, sorry about whatever you’re going through. [Laughs]

BALL: I’ve avoided most of the toxic stuff, but I definitely get a whiff of it often enough. I guess as a director you have to develop a pretty thick skin. You either will or won’t. But for the most part, I like social media. I like hearing what people are thinking, what they’re expecting. I find it helpful often, if you can figure out how to let the negative stuff roll off of you.

LEITCH: I think that’s a great answer. I think there’s such a use for it, obviously, in promoting new ideas and getting your message out there. Even in this promotion of The Fall Guy, we want to promote to different people and we want to find access to different ways to get people out to see the movie. You do want to hear what people are thinking and responding to, but it’s hard because it can be toxic. You can go down rabbit holes of your critics, and you’ve just gotta let that go. I think when you’re creating something, if you believe in it and you’re making it and you’re trying to bring it out into the world, you have to just let the negativity go.

BALL: That’s the hard part.

LEITCH: It’s hard, but you gotta do it.

Image via Paramount Pictures

GILLETT: It’s a shame that it gets weaponized, because I think we’re in the privileged position to get to make things that are about people having opinions. At the end of the day, the feedback is sort of a part of what it is. I mean, we make them for ourselves, but we don’t make it in a vacuum, right? So, I think it’s important to know how your ideas travel and what that feedback is. I think we, having come up in the early YouTube days, were sort of inoculated very early on. [Laughs]

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We definitely read those comments, and they were not often kind.

GILLETT: No. And we also played this game where whenever something releases on VOD — I don’t know if you guys do this — we go to Amazon and click on the one-star reviews. They’re hilarious. The people that say, “This is the best thing in the world,” and the people that say, “This is the worst thing in the world,” they know as much about you and the process the same amount. So I think you just have to take it all with a grain of salt, and just enjoy the ride.

BALL: I do wish it would kind of steer away from the negativity bias, though. There’s just something about people that don’t feel the need to say something positive, or they want to just go and rail on something, you know what I mean? That’s changed for me in the last 10 years or so if you watch where it’s going. Maybe you guys can all start bringing more positive air into that world for us. We have feelings, too! [Laughs]

GREIG FRASER: Hi, guys. The question for the directors on the panel today — what is the first thing you discuss with your cinematographer once they’ve got the job?

BALL: I’ve worked with Gyula Pados, my DP, for three movies now. We’ve developed a shorthand and we have very similar tastes, so typically it’s about me sitting here and pitching him the movie. We don’t talk about visuals, we talk about the movie and the feeling and the opportunities, and all those things, the things that I’m excited about at the moment. Then we start talking about the visuals, like, “Oh, we want this to feel like an old movie, like a ‘70s movie,” or whatever it is and what that means. Then we start figuring out the technical side of things. So, usually, for me, on the DP side of things, we don’t really talk about visuals. We talk about intention and the feeling of the movie itself, and tone.

LEITCH: I’ve worked with Jonathan Sela on all my films, since the first John Wick. Again, it’s a super close collaboration, and I would say the same thing. Visual style comes second, and we’re really sort of in line, generally, but the first thing is I pitch him the story. What is the story we want to tell? What are the themes we want to land? Because, at the end of the day, he is an incredible filmmaker, as well, so we’re entering, again, another collaboration like we keep talking about of these great artists. He’ll see it through the prism and he’ll come back to me with ideas of how we can land that tone and that story, or amplify these characters through a visual style, and then we’ll go back and forth and lock it. So, it’s really story first.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We’re very similar. We’ve worked with two DPs and Tyler came up as a DP, so we’re very much in that. We have our conversations and then we bring the DP in, and for the entire production, and often well after, they’re a third part of this team with us. Like Aaron Morton, who filmed Abigail with us, we’re still talking to him everyday, and we finished the movie yesterday. So, it’s like this constant process of collaboration, and, “How do we get you on our page, and how do we get on your page?” Because it’s not always our vision first. We’d have lunch every weekend in Dublin when we were shooting Abigail with Aaron and just talk about the movie. “What are we shooting this week? How are we gonna get through it?” There’s a lot of technical stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s feeling, it’s emotion, it’s vibes.

GILLETT: We talk a lot about the methodology and shooting approach, and I don’t mean that, like, frame-to-frame. Once you’re working in the machine of a larger movie, there’s so much inertia and it can feel so slow. In that slow pace, it sometimes feels like you’re missing opportunities for spontaneity, and I think so much of creating that feeling of spontaneity is about your relationship with how the set is run, and so much of how the set is run is about the camera department. So, wanting to, while you’re creating beautiful images, also create them in a way that allows it to feel a little bit scrappy and a little bit run-and-gun, even at the biggest level, so that you can leave room for things to be interesting and exciting, and sort of happen in the moment.

BALL: How do you guys approach it? Do you do long takes with single set-ups, or do you just use the pieces that you think you need?

GILLETT: Long takes.

BALL: Me too.

GILLETT: Our line producers would say too long.

LEITCH: It depends on the movie. With Bullet Train, I shot really specifically. It was a really specific style. We wanted short pieces, and I stayed in really short pieces of coverage, short pieces of dialogue. Except when Lemon and Tangerine would riff; then I’d just let the camera go. But then there are other movies like The Fall Guy. We chose a really different style, and I was shooting four or five cameras on longer lenses and we were letting them go in these more organic scenes. I do it both ways. Going back to “what’s the story you’re telling and what do I want it to feel like,” and that whole approach.

GLEN POWELL: What is up, WonderCon? I just wanted to ask the panel, all of you are known for theatrical movies, so I guess my question is, what gets people to the theaters these days? And what do you feel like the future of “theatrical” looks like?

LEITCH: Wow. Well, Glen Powell gets people to the theaters, obviously. Let’s just say that. I hope it’s original films, and I hope that that’s the future. We’ve done IP, and that’s great, but it’s also fun to do things that aren’t strictly based on IP or known IP, and to have original films. It’s great when audiences come out and support them. That’s like Bullet Train. It was based on a book, but it was a very, very original IP in that sense and Sony took a big swing. That’s where I think the future is — I hope it is. I think people are ready for it again. It’s how cinema used to be.

BALL: A lot of that comes down to, frankly, you guys, the audience, supporting that effort. The reason the other stuff gets made is because that’s what people show up to the theater and spend their money on. So there’s a little bit of the audience needs to support these efforts of movies that are fresh and different and unique.

GILLETT: And Glen Powell.

BALL: But I will say about the theater experience, though, there is nothing like it. There is nothing at all like it compared to the TV thing. There’s something about that experience of this giant screen, sitting in a group of strangers, and all having this one dream-like experience. It’s an experience. I’m hopeful. The business has always gone through these cycles. At one point Westerns were the thing, so we’re probably at a point where we’re going through another little change of what the audience’s taste is gonna want and desire. But I do hope it always comes down to great stories, emotion, and spectacle and truth. It’s that [François] Roland Truffaut quote, that the perfect movies are those blends of something you’ve never seen before, but also something that feels honest and true and moving and emotional, and all that kind of stuff.

GILLETT: I think the truth part of that is really interesting, too, just from a creative point of view. I mean, we all spend weeks and weeks cutting our movies alone in a room with an editor. Your first preview when it’s being screened in front of a real audience, the truth of your choices, whether it’s direct feedback or just the feel of the room, there is an honesty in the experience of watching a movie with a group of people that you lose when you’re alone. I think we all aim to make things that work in that space and then exist and have a life long after they leave the theater, but I think that that’s just what it’s all about. That’s my memories, my experience with movies. It’s all attached to showing up, this sort of eventized experience of being with your family or your friends and watching something in a dark theater. I think there’s just nothing like it.

EMILY BLUNT: I have a question for David. David, what is the most memorable stunt that you yourself have ever performed? I’m very happy to open this up to the rest of the panel to make you look cooler. So, yeah, what are the most memorable stunts any of you have ever performed?

LEITCH: Oh, thanks, Emily. The most memorable stunt — I talked a little bit about this on the Bullet Train premiere — was on The Mexican, doubling Brad [Pitt] when I crashed. We had two El Caminos…

GILLETT: That’s such a flex, by the way.

LEITCH: [Laughs] …where I accidentally crashed the one El Camino into the other El Camino.

BALL: Awesome.

LEITCH: I was really just supposed to drive through stoplights, but I got really excited because, “I’m doubling Brad Pitt!” I hit the brake and I hit some dirt and I lost control of the car, and one direction was video village where everyone was getting out of the way, and the other direction, in slow motion, was the El Camino. I was just like, “I guess I’m gonna wreck the El Camino.” [Laughs] But I remember the stunt coordinator coming up to me, and he’s like, “The one mistake you did was when you got out of the car, you should’ve yelled at transpo, ‘This thing doesn’t have any brakes!’” But I didn’t do that. I think I was let go from that film pretty quickly after that.

GILLETT: What was it like directing someone you doubled? That’s a fascinating evolution.

LEITCH: It was really fun. It was a really, really great experience. We had a great relationship as stunt double and stunt performer, and you do get close sometimes to your actors as friends because there’s trust that they have.

BALL: I always find that the bond between stunt double and actor is unlike anything else on set. I find it’s a really strong connection.

LEITCH: You’re spending a lot of time with them, training them…

BALL: Looking out for each other.

GILLETT: Safety is a very real part of film.

LEITCH: You’re testing the gags that they’re gonna do. You’re developing the action for the character. You’re standing in for the character, and you’re actually part of the character, as well, when you’re shooting second unit. So, you do become close.

GILLETT: There should be more stunt people for directors, I think. There should be an equivalent.

BALL: Let’s hear it for real stunts, baby!

LEITCH: You have a lot of access as a stunt performer. I got to mentor under a lot of great directors. You do get to have a lot of access. You’re on set all day waiting to do your stunts.

GILLETT: The stunts are sort of like the big magic of what movies are in so many respects. Like, creating danger in a way that’s safe and can be replicated, sometimes, many times, if you’re shooting a bunch of takes. It’s sort of like the machine operating at its best when you’re doing big, fun stunts.

Related ‘John Wick’ Director Chad Stahelski Is Pushing The Academy to Create a Best Stunts Category The ‘John Wick’ director has been in talks with the Academy for several months.

LEITCH: Totally. And it’s a craft. Again, we talk about it being recognized soon, hopefully, by the Academy, but it’s a craft. As a department, we talk about collaborations in making films. You have your hair department, your costume department, you have your special effects. Everyone is giving the director all of this great creative input. The stunt department’s doing the exact same thing. There’s a line in the script that says, “They conquered Rome,” and the stunt department puts together a whole action sequence and pitches to us how they conquered Rome. That is design. That is…

BALL: Storytelling.

LEITCH: That’s storytelling. So there’s a lot of great storytellers in the stunt department and they’re delivering on all these big commercial movies, small movies, indie movies, comedies, dramas. They deliver everyday.

BALL: Well said.

LEITCH: That’s my spiel.

‘Abigail’ Is an Original Bloodbath

You guys have Abigail coming out in a few weeks. What do you want to tell people about it, and why did you want to make this film as your next thing you made two Scream movies?

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: A big part of it was that it was original. The opportunity to go to Universal and make an original movie that’s not an independent movie we’re making with our friends for, like, $100 bucks was really, really alluring.

GILLETT: We’re excited to create a movie that is about that theatrical experience that we’re all talking about. I think knowing that that was the destination, it allows you to turn the dial up on everything.

BALL: And horror is especially potent in the theater when you’re around people.

GILLETT: And I think, tonally, we all maybe share something in common, as well, that was just apparent in Abigail from the start. It was scary and thrilling and funny and emotional. It was just a mix of all of those things…

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Really great characters.

GILLETT: …that you want to experience with a room full of people.

Image Via Universal

If I had seen the movie, hypothetically, I would say that you used all the blood on planet Earth in this film. It’s a bloodbath. You did a lot practically, so talk a little bit about why you wanted it to be practical, and turning everything up to 11, if you will, in certain scenes.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We approached it from day one as something that should be practical. A lot of it goes back to everything we’ve been talking about. For us, the audience can just latch onto something if it’s real, whether they know it’s fake or not, it’s obviously not real blood, but you feel it in the room. The actors can interact with it. Everything just becomes more alive, and it has that energy to it when you’re doing it for real on set. We came up trying to shoot everything almost doc style — running around, you can shoot up, down, left, right, spin around, go anywhere you want.

GILLETT: The world’s your set.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We try to maintain that as much as possible. With this movie, I think we did. We really tried to.

GILLETT: It’s fun, too. At the end of the day, shooting your actors with a blood cannon, they’re excited for it, as well.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Most of them are excited.

GILLETT: When you sign up for a movie like Abigail, you just sort of know that that’s gonna be part of it. There’s all of this anticipation that builds up around those events. When those events are practical and they’re done well and they’re done safely, there’s just nothing more thrilling. I think when you feel that in the making of it, you know that if it’s handled well down the line, it’s gonna work in the theater.

Abigail (2024) After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.Release Date April 19, 2024 Writers Guy Busick , Stephen Shields

Alisha Weir is so good in this movie. Talk a little bit about casting her, because she is fantastic.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: Agreed. She’s incredible. I think our biggest fear going into this movie was, “Who’s gonna play Abigail?” We didn’t know a lot of young actors. We auditioned a ton, and they were all really great, but Alisha, her audition, she did the scene where she reveals that she’s a vampire, and she did it on a Zoom. She lives in Dublin, where we filmed. It was the most authentic moment on a Zoom casting that we’ve ever had, where she vamped out, and we all went, “Fuck.”

GILLETT: She jump-scared us through our computers. [Laughs]

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: It was very real. So we cast her, and we were excited about it, but then getting out there and working with her, she was 10 out of 10, no notes. She came to set everyday fully prepared, the sweetest human being you’ve ever met, and she was so fun to work with, so fantastic. It was honestly like a dream. If you see the movie, she has so much she needs to put into this role, and she did it all flawlessly.

Image via Universal

GILLETT: I think she’s one of those prodigal talents that, when you get to know them as an actor — and this is so much a part of this collaborative approach — when they tell you what they’re good at, you have to listen. We showed up and Alisha was a great singer, a great dancer, and very funny, and could do literally 99% of the stunts in this movie. Our coordinator came up to us and was like, “Look, we’ve doubled her for all the stunts, but she’s actually better than the stunt doubles, so just let her do all of that stuff.” When you steer into everyone’s strengths, you end up with a performance that, I think, only could exist if that performer is in the movie doing what they do best.

BETTINELLI-OLPIN: 100%. And I mean, not for nothing, but when we went into production, and as we were meeting Alisha — this is gonna be hard to believe if you’ve seen the trailer — the dancing was not actually that big a part of it. It was a tiny little flavor, and then to Tyler’s point, it was because she was good at it that we were like, “Let’s do more.” And it really just defined the movie at the end of the day.

‘The Fall Guy’ Is David Leitch’s Passion Project

David, you have something coming out called The Fall Guy. I was able to see The Fall Guy at SXSW, and it is a massive home run. Everyone in this room is gonna love it. What was it like for you premiering at SXSW, because people loved the movie? Do you think it’s your best film yet?

LEITCH: Wow. You know, you were just talking about when you screen something for the first time and you finally get that feedback from the audience. It was a surreal experience, for sure, at SXSW. The crowd was on fire. They were really, really into it, loving the jokes, and diving into Ryan and Emily’s chemistry. So, I don’t know. Is it the best film that we’ve made? I would say it’s the one that’s closest to me. Because I was a stunt performer for 20-plus years, I think having a movie about a stuntman was just really personal. So, there’s a lot of my heart and a lot of anecdotes that are obviously a little hyperbolic in that world, but they’re from real life, being on set. I’m just really incredibly proud of it.

Image via Universal

The reason I think people are gonna respond to it, and the reason I responded to it, is because it’s a love letter to the stunt community and everyone who makes movies, you have a mystery that works, and you have insane chemistry between Ryan and Emily. How happy are you to have this as Ryan’s first movie after Barbie?

LEITCH: So happy. It’s funny, Kelly McCormack, my producer and my wife, we make these movies together. This is a very tight collaboration. We were fighting so hard to get Fall Guy off the ground before Barbie. The studio was really trying to pressure Ryan, if they could, like, “Can we squeeze Fall Guy in before Barbie?” We were trying to move up deadlines. We were really trying so hard, and then finally, we just couldn’t make production work to where we could get it done before he had to go to Barbie. Now, in hindsight, it’s like the best thing that ever happened. So, you never know. Problem, opportunity, folks. You just never know. That’s just how Hollywood is. But yeah, it’s really fortunate to be where Ryan and Emily are having such a well-deserved moment, and now we get to see them in our film. At this time, it’s an incredible gift.

I think you should show people your T-shirt because that has something to do with the movie.

LEITCH: Oh, so this is actually important to the film. There is a Kiss track in the movie. We’re talking about working with composers, and I use needle drops a lot in my movie. When we say needle drops, I use a lot of songs, obviously like Phil Collins, or in Atomic Blonde, the whole movie there’s a lot of needle drops. The Kiss track was really important, and so I worked with Dominic Lewis to create thematic elements from “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” And actually, we re-recorded a ballad version with Yungblood, which is out at the end of this month. That’s in the movie. We got license to use that. So, when you see the movie, you’ll hear the lick from “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” deconstructed throughout the film and it sort of connects Ryan and Emiy’s character. Anyway, Kiss is back.

The Fall Guy Colt Seavers is a stuntman who left the business a year earlier to focus on both his physical and mental health. He’s drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie, which is being directed by his ex, goes missing.Release Date May 3, 2024 Runtime 114 minutes Writers Drew Pearce , Glen A. Larson

The best part of the marketing, thus far, for Fall Guy is so much has not been revealed. I can’t recommend it enough. You’re gonna have a blast. I promise.

LEITCH: Thank you.

BALL: I’ll say this about your movie: I have a fun story. While we were shooting in Australia for Apes, because you were shooting at the same time, I kept getting all these crazy stories of these crazy stunts you were doing out around Sydney. So, I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve done out there. It looks awesome.

LEITCH: Yeah, locking down the bridge, the Sydney Harbor bridge, they hadn’t done that in probably 25 years, or something like that. We had it from four a.m. to six a.m. I had to shoot dragging Ryan across the bridge. He got there and it’s like five in the morning, and he’s a little bit like, “Okay, what am I doing?” I’m like, “Shh,” and hook him up to the wires. “Hold on to this shovel.” “What?” “We’re going to drag you. It’s only 30 miles an hour. You’ll be fine.” He’s like, “Seriously?” I’m like, “Action!” Then he said he went back to the hotel and he slept, and then he woke up and he was like, “Was that a dream? What just happened?” “No, you actually did that, Ryan.” So it was pretty amazing.

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Is a Bridge Between the Original and the Caesar Trilogy

Wes, let’s talk about a certain Apes movie you have coming out. Say in this room, people don’t know what it’s about. What do you want to tell people about it, and what was it about the material that said, “This is going to be my next movie?”

BALL: I was looking for what to do next after I had a previous movie called Mouse Guard that crashed and burned. We were just about to make it, and I was making it with Matt Reeves at Fox. We were licking our wounds from that thing, and someone came and asked, “What would you do with the next Planet of the Apes? You just learned all this big mo-cap stuff, and you’re friends with Matt. What would you do?” Actually, I was a little hesitant at first, to be honest, and then I had this idea. What I was worried about was if it was a straight part four, a direct sequel, it somehow felt unnecessary. It was sort of unimaginative in a way. It felt like it would be unfairly sort of compared to that perfect trilogy that came previously in the last 10 years.

So, we came up with this idea to stay in the same universe. We’re still a part of Caesar’s world, but we’re cutting many, many years later, after the fact, where you get to really explore what’s become of Caesar, what’s become of his legacy, his ideas. Also, on the same level of the Apes thing, there’s this 1968 version that really started everything, which I was a huge fan of when I was kid. So, could we do this thing where we are both a sequel and a prequel, essentially? We find ourselves sort of in the middle, honoring where we came from with this great reboot that happened with the Caesar trilogy, and start making our way to that ‘68 version where apes are talking and have democracy and all this crazy stuff. So, that was kind of the approach that we took.

While I understand some fans were really looking forward to the whole Cornelius thing, that story can still be told at some point, I’m sure, but it opened up this whole bigger, mythic kind of story that fits into the franchise of Planet of the Apes, not just a sequel to the last three. We hopefully have found that balance where we are kind of honoring this long, since 1968, franchise of these movies, but still create our own stand-alone, hopefully beginning of a new chapter of stories to be told.So that was the approach we took, and of course, because [with] these movies the visual spectacle has always been a big part of the movies, whether it’s the ‘68 version where it was just the top-notch best makeup effects ever done, or in the last, previously, where it’s like the best visual effects you’ve ever seen, we still have that challenge ahead of us here. Anyway, we’ll see if we’ve done it in about four weeks, I guess, when I deliver the movie.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he’s been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.Release Date May 10, 2024 Main Genre Sci-Fi Writers Patrick Aison , Josh Friedman , Rick Jaffa , Amanda Silver

Can you watch this without having seen the other films?

BALL: Yes. Yeah, you can. You can absolutely watch this movie as its own thing. There’s even a little tiny taste of a prologue up front that sets the stage for anyone who isn’t super aware. I will say this, though, if you have seen the previous three, and especially the first in ‘68, you’ll be much rewarded if you have seen those movies and you watch this movie. We don’t necessarily hold the audience’s hand. We ask you to lean in and use your head, and that’s the beauty about these Planet of the Apes movies is that they are the thinking person’s blockbusters. They are thought-provoking and entertaining; they are small and big. So, the short answer is yes, you absolutely can bring your kids to it. It’s not gory. It maybe has some adult ideas in it, but we’ve made something here that we hope a lot of people can enjoy together with their families.

The story follows a character called Noa, who’s our main protagonist of this world. He is a naive, innocent young ape who sets out on this grand adventure of discovery into a world he doesn’t know anything about. He doesn’t really know anything about humans, doesn’t know anything about other apes that may exist. On this big adventure, terrible things happen and he befriends a wild human, played by Freya Allan, and she becomes very important to the story. The two characters have been captured by an ape who’s been chasing these characters through the landscape. He’s brought into a world he’s never seen before.

Image via 20th Century Studios

GILLETT: You work, you make movies for a while if you have the chance, and I watch your clips and I just love the idea that I see that stuff and I don’t know how you did it. I love that. As somebody who knows how to make movies, that’s what excites me is watching something and just being like, “Shit, I don’t know how.” And I love that, man. You guys are the best out there.

BALL: I say the same thing about yours, dude.

LEITCH: I think it’s with every filmmaker, when you look at someone else’s film and you look at it with the curiosity of, “How did you make it?”

BALL: The craft that goes into making that stuff.

LEITCH: Like you say, they’re all handcrafted. So there are different methodologies, individual effects, and my mind was running, like, “How did you do that? And what style of visual effects? Was it on-set capture, was that set extension or partial build? Did you shoot practical?”

BALL: All of it. [Laughs]

LEITCH: Knowing there’s many ways to skin that cat, but you’re right.

BALL: It’s a wild process, I’ve got to say. I have a background in VFX. I like to say that I know enough to be dangerous. My previous two movies for The Maze Runner, it was good practice for this kind of execution-level type stuff. But man, there’s nothing quite like this kind of moviemaking. Just the process is so unique and different. Thankfully I’ve had, like you guys have said, just incredible team members around us, each the best at what they do. We all come together over the period of, like two years now, and try to give you guys something that’s gonna blow your minds.

In terms of the visual effects side of things, you know how it is. You always have those shots where you’re like, “I wish that could be better.” And I am biased here, but I’m pretty sure this is some of the best CG that’s every been done. For sure.

12:48 Related ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Owen Teague Shares the Killer Advice He Received From Andy Serkis The new franchise star also teases plot details.

LEITCH: I will say, and not to talk about Fall Guy, but I’ve done movies in the visual effects world, like when you saw Hobbs and Shaw. In the Fast [& Furious] universe, you’re allowed to explore physics that don’t make any sense, and that’s the fun of the movie. But in Fall Guy, what we did, we had a great visual effects team on Fall Guy, but we took the opposite approach in the sense that everything we could do practical, we did. We were exhausted. We left no stone unturned about doing things practically. We jumped the car at 225 feet, we did 165 foot-high fall for real. Things that we could have punted to VFX and they would have delivered it in a great way, but because we were honoring the craft of the stunt performer and it was about a stuntman, we really just leaned into the practicality of it.

That being said, in modern filmmaking, you’re always gonna have a visual effects component that supports you. So the scene that you saw, where the bin is spinning, we dragged that bin around the streets of Sydney, spinning it, effects had made a rig, but visual effects helped us erase the rig. But actually, the actors are in the rig, going 20 miles an hour, spinning in a circle. You could do that on a blue screen stage, and it could be super compelling, or you could drag them across the streets of Sydney.

GILLETT: More compelling. [Laughs]

LEITCH: I think for a movie about a stunt performer, sure. In an action movie where it’s about analog stunts, yeah. But then, when you’re making an immersive world where we can’t get apes to talk yet, you want to lean into this.

BALL: Not yet. We tried.

LEITCH: Not yet. It’s coming. Science can do anything. But you want to lean into these great visual effects teams and your great collaborators.

BALL: That, to me, was what was so surprising about this process. We probably had one blue screen set on the movie. For the most part, we’re out in real locations shooting with real actors. They happen to be in these funny dots with this stupid camera in their face everywhere, which they eventually kind of forget about, but you make it like a live-action movie. You just have to image that, “Oh, that’s going to be an ape doing that in a year.” That’s the whole thing. How do you give the spontaneity? That’s the thing for me. The challenge on this movie was, “How do you make a movie that’s so technically…?” I kind of liken it to building a jigsaw puzzle, all in separate pieces, it’s own piece individually, and you gotta carve it just the right way over here in these different kinds of arrangements. It’s not until the last four weeks, where I’m at right now, where all those pieces come together, and you have no time to change it, and they better fit.

Image via 20th Century

It’s very much this crazy process where I’ll go out there and we’ll shoot these cameras. I love these spontaneous cameras. I like handheld movies, I like complicated moves that have their own kind of life and richness to them. Then you let the actors kind of wind them up, and you let them go, and you hope you capture magic. The problem is, I have twelve cameras around us that are just separate cameras that capturing every little nuance of the actor. I’ve got a camera on his face, and I’ve got about half-a-dozen to two dozen infrared cameras that are hiding in the set, behind little things of leaves, or whatever, just camouflaged on the set, that are actually the technical craft process of capturing all of this information so that we can get it right. So that all the choices that the actors have made in the sun, while they’re sweating, and believing that they’re really apes, and all this kind of stuff, we capture it. So when it goes back into the labs at Wētā, and all those artists and miracle workers of people, they’re not inventing something on their own, they’re taking what those actors have done, those subconscious choices that they made that feels real, and they apply it like digital makeup to these characters. So, ultimately the images up there might be full CG, 100%, which there’s about 30 to 40 minutes of full CG, which I don’t think people will be able to tell, there’s some scenes that you would never guess, just because that’s how it had to get done. But it all started from a real camera, and a real world with real, physical actions. Even like the stunts and stuff, we put them on wires and we let them go climb a building 30 feet in the air. We didn’t necessarily have to, but it gives a vibe. You shoot it in a different way. You put your cameras in a different spot.

GILLETT: Those limitations actually make it feel real.

BALL: Exactly. There’s something about the nature of us as moviegoing people for a hundred years, there is a language that we have come to expect because we’ve been so limited by the tools that we use to shoot it. So, there’s a way the dolly moves, or a way the crane goes up. It’s intuitive but it is a thing that makes it feel real. That is the magic trick of, say, the Planet of the Apes movies. Anything that pulls you out, you’ve lost the illusion. So that is constantly our challenge on these movies. We analyze every pixel, like a blade of grass in the background. I take for granted now the apes, that full CG ape sitting there crying, and I’m talking about the grass in the background because it’s kind of distracting in some way. You end up taking for granted just the sheer amount of technical achievement of these movies. It was really a fun time, but it’s a hell of a challenge.

Abigail is on the hunt in theaters on April 19. You can check out all the unbelievable stunts in The Fall Guy on May 3, and we return to the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes on May 8.