COMPANION director Drew Hancock on subverting genre expectation and navigating twists

The AU Review

New Line Cinema, the studio that brought you 'The Notebook', the unhinged creators of 'Barbarian', and writer/director Drew Hancock cordially invite you to experience a new kind of love story…   COMPANION   COMPANION, which makes for biting viewing, gleefully playing at once with the dynamics of power as it toys with our own expectations, is a twisted and unexpected take on what it means to find your soulmate in a digital age, and as it gears up to shock and entertain audiences in equal measure from this weekend, The AU Review caught up with creator Hancock to celebrate.   Speaking to our own Peter Gray, the filmmaker touched on the origins of his story, navigating the twists of his story, and what it is that makes us like Jack Quaid so much, even when we know we shouldn’t.   #Companion #interview #DrewHancock #JackQuaid #horror #AI

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00:00Peter Grey from the AU in Australia, hello Drew. Hello. Congratulations on the film first of all,

00:05I walked into this knowing nothing, I hadn't seen the trailer so this was a very big surprise and

00:12I was like I wasn't sure what I could say and couldn't say in this. Great, yeah. I wanted to

00:17know where sort of the, I guess the original idea stemmed from because obviously you have like

00:23the physical manifestation of you know like the lonely heart so to speak, you have AI

00:28like sexbot, hedonism, like I just wanted to know like where did the sort of original companion

00:34idea stem from? Yeah, so I mean every project is totally different like you know like sometimes

00:39like you never know what that seed of the idea will be, sometimes it's like one single image,

00:44sometimes it's a character, sometimes it's a scene. For this one I don't really know but like

00:50the complete fully baked logline just like really just came to me immediately, I just for some

00:56reason it was like oh you know some couples go to a cabin in the middle of the woods and one of

01:01them discovers they're a robot and then you know like things go you know south and

01:07you know you take that horror structure and the character gets picked off every 10 pages but

01:12what I didn't have in that moment was I didn't have Iris being the protagonist, my initial

01:18instinct was to make Iris the antagonist like the AI gone wrong story that we've seen a

01:24thousand times, it's just immediately where my brain was going but it wasn't until I started

01:29writing the movie that you know like writing the script and just fleshing out who she is and I'm

01:34getting to the scene where she's you know she's outside the house and she's worried about

01:39meeting Josh and his friends and suddenly I'm tapping into this really relatable fear

01:45that I had meeting partners, friends and families and how alienating that is and like

01:51immediately I'm like wait a minute I'm like relating to the robot more than I'm relating to

01:55the human characters and so I had to kind of put the whole project on pause and be like

01:59well is this a possibility can I tell the story through the point of view of the robot is that

02:04is that doable to get an audience to relate to the robot and not the humans and

02:11that and as soon as I had that you know I didn't know if I could pull it off but I knew that I had

02:15something kind of original and fresh and I just you know took that idea and just ran with it.

02:21I'm going to say you pulled it off because obviously like the line go to sleep now has a

02:25much different thing but when like so when you realize like oh Iris is going to be who we

02:32follow and who we sort of care for did that make it easier to change Jack Quaid into

02:38not necessarily the nicest guy? No I mean it I mean that's that's always been a tough needle to

02:45thread I mean like I knew after I'd finished the script that that was going to be tough because

02:50it's a tall ask you know he's saying really unlikable things immediately like he's telling

02:54a woman to smile and act happy right out of the gate like there's no version of that where it's a

02:59you know it's coming from a place of good so you know like so so so finding someone that could

03:05say that and it doesn't feel malicious but it comes from a place of of I you know this person

03:11doesn't know any better this person is just maybe a little doofus like a man child and

03:16not that like Jack has Josh within him but the first time I met him I'm like oh my gosh this

03:22guy has the charisma that we need he can make unlikability likable and that that's that's

03:28exactly what we needed with the Josh character. Yeah well I feel like after Scream we should all

03:33sort of be on a bit like eerie with Jack Quaid but he is like the nicest guy so like absolutely

03:38pulled it off like yeah when I was watching it the things he was saying just it never like it

03:43never occurred to me that there was something you know more sinister going on I was under the

03:49impression that the house was going to sort of reveal a lot of secrets and yeah like it was just

03:54so like perfectly executed and I kind of want to say anything but obviously the other reveals later

04:02on were like like thank you that was great one of those things like did did they like without

04:10saying too much did that sort of kind of naturally progress or not yeah yeah yeah I mean like I knew

04:17that you know obviously you know you you you know this movie is going to hinge on a giant twist you

04:22know I knew that like you know there is going to be a moment where she discovers what she is and

04:27that'll also be the moment that the audience discovers what she is but when you're writing it

04:31you're like okay I have a choice to make is this a third act reveal is this a midpoint reveal is

04:35this a first act reveal is this like first five pages so you have to make that decision and then

04:40as soon as I was like well I you know I don't want it to turn into one of those movies that's

04:44marketed as a twist movie where it's like everyone because you watch those differently right you're

04:49watching like you're not like immersing yourself in the story you're like thinking you're trying

04:55to get ahead of the twist and you're like every every decision that every character is making

04:59you're like looking under a microscope going like who is this guy who so you're like not fully

05:04enjoying it so I wanted to kind of have my cake and eat it too so I knew that I would this would

05:08be a first act reveal so we get a little bit of that like what's what's going to happen what's

05:14going to happen and then a beautiful thing happens when you present it as this big twist and it's

05:18revealed and it's revealed earlier than a lot of people think it's going to reveal suddenly they're

05:22they're like oh I don't know what this movie is now like like like this is like this could go

05:28in totally in so many different directions and that's the fun of it it's like so people that

05:32know the twist and people that don't know it the twist like after about you know after the reveal

05:38like suddenly everyone's enjoying it the exact same way everyone's like okay well I don't know

05:43what's going to happen now and that's the I think that's the kind of fun is like the the slight of

05:48hand like kind of my magicians like you know the the robot reveal thing is kind of hiding

05:53all the other little like like twists and turns and swerves yeah no we had our cake and we ate it

05:58it was great so thank you thank you so much thank you

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