Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub speaks with Inheritance co-writer and director Neil Burger.

Inheritance stars Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, and Ciara Baxendale, about a woman who discovers her father was an international spy.

In this interview, Burger discusses how the movie was shot globally on an iPhone, filmed during flights, and the true story he’s eyeing for his next project.

No single genre defines filmmaker Neil Burger. From helming high-concept sci-fi mind-twisters like Limitless with Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, to down-to-earth tearjerkers like The Upside with Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. His previous outing was The Marsh King’s Daughter, a vengeance thriller starring Daisy Ridley. Now he’s back with something on an entirely different plane– Inheritance, an international espionage action flick shot entirely from the hip.
Inheritance follows Phoebe Dynevor’s Maya as she’s dragged into an international conspiracy after learning about her father Sam’s (Rhys Ifans) secret spy past. The film features in New York City, India, South Korea, and Egypt and also stars Ciara Baxendale and Kersti Bryan.
Collider’s own Steve Weintraub had the pleasure of sitting down with Burger to discuss all things Inheritance. Together, they discuss the film’s unique guerrilla style, stealing shots all over the world on iPhones, as well as his upcoming biopic about mathematician Christopher Havens and directing The Agency with Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere.
‘Inheritance’ Was Filmed in a “Clandestine” Style With an iPhone

“If you go with a film crew, you disrupt the world.”

COLLIDER: First of all, congrats. You made something unique, and you told the story in a way that I’ve never seen. I just want to say thanks for taking the risk.
NEIL BURGER: Thank you. It was fun, and it was a risk. It was supposed to be a risk. The idea was to go and see the world, the new normal after COVID in a way — it’s not a COVID movie, but it was done shortly after COVID — and see, “What’s the world like?” That was kind of the inception of the story. But if you go with a film crew, you disrupt the world. The world ends up looking at you. You don’t get to look at the world. And so I had this idea of shooting it with a very small crew and shooting it on an iPhone, and not as a gimmick, not as merely a substitution for a film camera, but because it gave us access. It meant that we could walk through a crowded Cairo market, and nobody would look at us. There are no boom mics, no lighting, just somebody with a phone shooting their friend, seemingly.
That said, it’s tightly scripted. It’s an international thriller, so all the puzzle pieces need to fit together. We went around the world. We went from New York to Cairo to Delhi to Seoul, and back to New York. In a way, there have been other movies shot on iPhones before, but this is the first international thriller that goes around the world that’s ever been shot on an iPhone that has this kind of scope. That’s a grand international movie, and so I feel very proud of that.

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“It Was Very Scary”: ‘Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor Explains Why She Committed Real-Life Theft for ‘Inheritance’

The movie premieres on January 24.

Some of the places you shot, you’re really not allowed to shoot. Let me give you an example: The Seoul passport control is an area that you should not be in. That whole area is no cameras. So my question is, what would have happened had anyone realized what you were doing? Did you have that backup plan?
BURGER: What we did was we did have contingencies for everything in case they went wrong. However, the movie has a kind of stolen aesthetic. We shot on airplanes in flight, we shot in those passport controls, and the way we shot those scenes, like in the passport, were kind of from the hip. So, that then determined how the rest of the movie was going to be shot. So even if we were in an apartment or a hotel room where we could shoot anywhere we wanted to, we still shot it kind of in that same clandestine from-the-hip sort of feel. We had production service people with us if anything happened. We had fixers and things like that if we needed to, but we didn’t end up having to use them. Quite frankly, we got away with everything.
She goes into a store in JFK… We had a very small crew. We took the same trip that she took. If she was going to the airport to get on a flight, we were going to the airport to get on a flight to fly to Egypt or whatever. She walked into a fancy accessory store and jewelry store and stole a pair of sunglasses. It was scripted.
I actually want to pause you there because she does it so expertly. What the hell would have happened had it gone wrong?
BURGER: Yes, well, we were ready for that. And she does it expertly because I trained her on how she wasn’t just going to grab it and run. She had a very deliberate way of doing it, and she just seemed like a customer who didn’t draw any attention to her. There’s this methodology that I came up with in my devious mind to do it. We had scouted it before. We went around the world twice before we shot the movie. We had scouted that store, chosen that one, chosen the exact pair of sunglasses that she was going to steal, and then bought the same pair of sunglasses at the Fifth Avenue store, had it with us, had a receipt, had an excuse, had all sorts of contingencies and explanations for if she got caught, but in fact, she walked away with it. Then we just quietly put it back, and they never knew the difference.
How Neil Burger Managed to Pull Off Filming and Dialogue on a Plane

“We brought them over into our camp.”

Image via IFC Films

It’s crazy. Let’s talk about the transatlantic flight and recording dialogue in business class. You’re not doing ADR, so how nervous are you when you’re filming that you’re actually getting the dialogue on the iPhone and that it’s not going to be lost?
BURGER: We didn’t have boom mics, but they were on wires.
Oh, okay.
BURGER: Actually, they had their own recorders on them. They were just recording their sound, and it was good. The sound is good. It sounds different than if it was on a set because it has all that pressure, a pressurized hiss, and things like that on a real airplane. I wasn’t worried because, again, we had tested it. We knew exactly that when we got on the flight, we had 22 minutes before they made us put our seatbelts on, and then I would have to sit down. Then the seatbelt came off. We knew we had 28 minutes before they started serving the meal service, which was going to get too busy for us to do it, etc. We knew exactly how we were doing it and when we were going to do it.
When we first walked on the flight, because we shot everywhere, the cameraman walked down the jetway with them filming, which we knew, “Maybe we’re pushing that a little bit, showing and filming,” and the first thing the flight attendant said is, “No filming. You can’t film.” My response was, “Yes, we can.” We just kept on doing it. I said, “Sure we can,” and then we kept on doing it, and they got distracted because, in the first scene, they’re seating other people. That’s really happening. Then, in the second scene, they were like, “Who is she? She’s famous, isn’t she?” And I was like, “She is. And she’s going over to your country to film a movie, and we’re taking pictures of her.” Everything’s all true. We never lied about anything. Then they were like, “Could we get a picture with her afterward?” And it was like, “Absolutely.” Then, by the third scene, we were blocking the aisle and asking the flight attendant, “Can you just wait a second?” And they were great. We kind of brought them over into our camp.

Image via IFC Films

That’s so funny. How did the film change in the edit in ways you didn’t expect? I am curious if the story changed at all based on footage.
BURGER: The story didn’t really change. We tightened it up. I was in love with walking around these places, these cities. They’re such fascinating places, Cairo and Delhi and even Seoul in its own way, and even in New York. So, some of that stuff got truncated because it is a thriller, and it needs to move more. I think, really, it got tighter. There were some sort of start and stop things that happened in India where she arrives, and she checks in and gets dinner. It was like, “No, no, no, no. This is urgent. She needs to go right to the safety deposit box and get it.” So, some of that stuff we changed, but mostly it is as written.
How does it work with the legal releases? For example, let’s go back to the plane. You had all these people boarding the plane in business class and you sort of see them, and also on the streets. Do you need to get a release from these people? What’s the legal stuff like when making a film like this?
BURGER: In business class, you don’t see them. The people that are sitting in business class are our crew people. We were very careful with it. Occasionally, if there was a child or something like that who sort of got into frame, we would digitally put a COVID mask on them. Sometimes we put big glasses on somebody or something like that. We digitally would alter their faces if there were an issue, but most often, there was not.
What’s Next for Neil Burger?

The director is doing a biopic drama on Christopher Havens.

Image via Showtime

When we last spoke, you told me about this movie and how you shot it in secret. What are you working on now? What’s coming up for you?
BURGER: Another secret. It’s different. I’m not shooting it on an iPhone, but it’s kind of a contemporary story in the news, so I’m being a little bit cool about that. I also have this other movie about this real guy named Christopher Havens, who is a math genius who is in prison. He was a meth addict and a drug dealer and murdered somebody, and never went to school past the age of 14. When he went to jail, he discovered mathematics. He didn’t just discover mathematics — he’s a bonafide math genius who’s changed the world of math, which matters because it’s a profound story of transformation. It’s a great story.
These days, it’s hard to get dramas made. Nobody wants to fund them. I think people still want to see them, but they’re hard to market, and they’re hard to press into the marketplace and press forward. So, it’s tough going.
It’s not just drama. Getting a movie made now seems like it’s tougher than ever in the history of Hollywood.
BURGER: Yeah. But I will tell you about something funny. I just did a TV show called The Agency, and I do the finale block, which is with Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright. The first one, Episode 9, comes out tomorrow, and then Episode 10 comes out on the 24th, which is the day my movie comes out. So, I have two espionage things premiering on the same day, which is great.
Inheritance is exclusively in theaters now.

Inheritance

Release Date

January 24, 2025

Runtime

101 minutes

Director

Neil Burger

Writers

Neil Burger, Olen Steinhauer

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