What began as a pandemic-era writing exercise is now Companion, Drew Hancock’s widely acclaimed feature directorial debut.
Feeling unfulfilled by the sitcom-heavy direction his career was going, Hancock admitted some hard truths to himself during the dregs of 2020. So the Omaha, Nebraska native decided to write his way out of his lot at the time by crafting a genre feature that he could use as a writing sample to land other related work. That screenplay became Companion, and feeling confident in what he’d committed to paper, the filmmaker decided to send the script to a mutual friend of BoulderLight Pictures’ J.D. Lifshitz.
Riding high on their recent producorial success of Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, Lifshitz and his producing partner Raphael Margules were so impressed by Hancock’s script that they brought it to the rest of the Barbarian brain trust including Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Cregger himself. From there, BoulderLight set up Companion under their banner’s then-freshly signed first-look deal with New Line.
However, Companion was initially going to be Cregger’s directorial follow-up to Barbarian until he saw how protective and passionate Hancock was in regard to his script. One can also surmise that Cregger — based on his own decade-long quest to reset his career — recognized that Hancock was in a similar position that he was in before BoulderLight and Vertigo rolled the dice on Barbarian. Thus, Cregger presumably paid it forward.
“A couple weeks into meeting each other and talking about the project, [Cregger] called me up and said, ‘How would you feel about directing this movie?’” Hancock tells The Hollywood Reporter. “What I didn’t know is that he had already gone behind my back and talked to BoulderLight and Vertigo to get their permission. They all signed off, and it was now up to me if I wanted to do it.”
Surprisingly, Hancock didn’t immediately say yes to the career-changing opportunity he’d been dreaming of for quite some time. Instead, he took another look in the mirror, just as he had done during the pandemic.
“It took probably two days for me to figure that out, which is two too many days to figure that out. After hemming and hawing, I realized that my trepidation was coming from a place of fear,” Hancock recalls. “But after two days, I was like, ‘What am I talking about? How often are you given an opportunity like this, you idiot?’ So I called Zach up and was like, ‘I’m so sorry it took me so long to figure this out, but yes, please, I want to direct this movie.’”
The thriller centers on the seemingly idyllic couple of Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quiad) during a weekend getaway among the latter’s friends. But as per the advertised reveal, Iris is actually a companion robot, and the gathering soon goes awry as Josh’s true colors come to light.
The film includes a flashback scene that depicts the day that Iris was first delivered to Josh’s apartment by way of her manufacturer, Empathix Robotics. And as the box is wheeled inside his residence, Josh is listening to Goo Goo Dolls’ smash hit “Iris,” leading the viewer to conclude that he named his new robot after his favorite song. Hancock is hesitant to confirm this theory, but he does admit that the song is also meant to be a nod to Quaid’s mother, Meg Ryan. “Iris” was originally written for the soundtrack of Ryan’s 1998 movie, City of Angels.
“And like Companion, [City of Angels] is a Warner Bros. movie. So it’s kind of a magical choice that has many layers to it, and that’s why I don’t want to put a pin in it and say, ‘This is why she’s named Iris,’” Hancock says.
As for the future of Companion, Hancock isn’t interested in extending the story, which is a rarity in this day and age. (Following THR’s interview, it was reported that he’s already hard at work on writing a reboot of Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 sci-fi horror film, The Faculty.)
“Warner Bros. wouldn’t want me to write my sequel. The story of Companion, as far as I see it, is in this movie. That’s as far as I want to take it, for sure,” Hancock states.
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Hancock also discusses a fitting cameo he tried to pull off.
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Well, thank you for taking time away from the filmography of Willa Fitzgerald to be here today.
(Laughs.) I am assuming you saw the IndieWire thing. Her performance in Strange Darling blew my mind. It was amazing.
Have you seen season one of Reacher, starring her and your former Blue Mountain State actor, Alan Ritchson?
I actually have not seen Reacher yet, so I’ll add that to the list of things I need to watch.
There was a report last year that a Blue Mountain State sequel series was being shopped around town. Do you have any ties to it?
I’m still friendly with [co-creators] Chris Romano and Eric Falconer, and if they do make the show, I would love to return. That was my first real writing job, and I feel an affinity to the material and to them. So I would love to be involved, even if it’s just consulting or directing an episode or writing an episode, freelance, if I don’t have the time. I love that show, and I’d be foolish not to go back. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had working on any show. I just sat in a room with my friends and came up with the craziest ideas imaginable.
Blue Mountain State is one of several sitcoms you wrote for, and while Companion is quite funny, it’s a pretty big departure from your previous work. Were you trying to reinvent yourself to some degree?
I wouldn’t call it reinvention. It’s just proof that this is the type of writing that I’ve always wanted to do. This is me recalibrating my career. This is me realizing that I was in a place where I didn’t have anything that truly represented my voice. I’ve always been such a huge genre fan and movie fan, and truthfully, I’ve never been a big TV watcher. But I worked in television originally because that’s where the paychecks were. My agent at the time pushed me into the TV world, and I lived paycheck to paycheck. I was still living comfortably and having a good time, but creatively, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled, which was my own fault.
It took a global pandemic to make me look in the mirror and ask, “Are you happy with where your career is right now? Why aren’t you getting the job opportunities that you truly want? You’re getting passed over on the things that you want. You’re continuing to find work in YA, sitcoms and comedy, but no one is coming to you for genre stuff, which is what you truly love.” So Companion was born from that. It was me sitting down and saying, “Write something that you want to see.” I’d hate to say “represent your brand,” because that’s a buzzy way of describing it and makes me want to barf a little bit. But it’s true. I didn’t have anything that represented me, and this was a moment for me to sit down and put my money where my mouth is. And now, four years later, I’m sitting here talking to you.
When did the “unhinged creators” of Barbarian get involved?
(Laughs.) They came in very early on actually. I went through many bad versions of the script and kept rewriting it. I then sent it to trusted voices in my life, and I got it to a place where I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to show this to producers.” And J.D. Lifshitz was top of mind because he was a friend of a friend. His [and Raphael Margules’] company, BoulderLight, was also having a moment with Barbarian, so I literally sent it to him on the same day that I wrote “the end” on the final draft. Within 24 hours, he’d read it, and BoulderLight attached themselves as producers. Then they sent it to Roy Lee within 48 hours of me writing “the end,” and he came onboard. Then it was sent to [Zach] Cregger. So, within a week, I had four producers attached to the movie.
I like to set the bar as low as possible, and my original intention was just to have a writing sample. I didn’t ever think I’d be sitting here talking to you about the making of the movie and the release of the movie. It’s a very surreal experience to have actually gone from, “Okay, this is a writing sample,” to, “Oh my God, this is going to be released, and it is my directorial debut.”
There was talk of Companion being Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian, but then he instead backed you to make your feature directorial debut. How did that deal go down?
Zach is a very smart, very generous guy, and for a brief moment, he was going to be the director of Companion. But sitting down with him through the polishing process and just talking it through, I was very protective of it. I kind of needled him and asked, “How would you shoot this scene? How would you do that scene?” So I think that he saw my passion and that I came at it not just as a writer, but also from a director’s point of view. So I think he saw that very early on and realized that he might be better suited to take a step back and be more of a producer and mentor to me through the process. And that is a conclusion he made all on his own. I didn’t go, “Hey, how would you feel about stepping aside and letting me direct it?” I never thought that; I just thought that would hurt the movie.
But a couple weeks into meeting each other and talking about the project, he called me up and said, “How would you feel about directing this movie?” What I didn’t know is that he had already gone behind my back and talked to BoulderLight and Vertigo to get their permission. They all signed off, and it was now up to me if I wanted to do it. It took probably two days for me to figure that out, which is two too many days to figure that out. After hemming and hawing, I realized that my trepidation was coming from a place of fear. I knew what goes into directing a movie, and I wondered if I had the ability to take it to the finish line. But after two days, I was like, “What am I talking about? How often are you given an opportunity like this, you idiot?” So I called Zach up and was like, “I’m so sorry it took me so long to figure this out, but yes, please, I want to direct this movie. Let’s make it happen.”
You were fast-tracked into production. Was the idea to get it done before the then-likely actors’ strike in mid-July of 2023?
There was a lot of good luck involved with why it happened so fast. BoulderLight had just signed this first-look-type deal with New Line, and the ink had barely dried on that deal when they signed on to Companion. M3GAN had also come out, and suddenly, AI robot movies were the hot properties. So that one-two punch put it on this track to where everyone just immediately saw it as a green-light picture, and that’s not lost on me. I’m incredibly grateful. I know people that have been through development hell, and I know how long it takes to make a movie. But the strike ended up hitting us literally halfway through production, so we had to stop shooting and come back five months later to finish it.
I’m glad I got to watch Companion without knowing anything, but as a former marketer, I understand the need for the trailer to sell a secret. That said, if you had your druthers, would you have saved the robot reveal for the actual viewing experience?
Yeah, I would love to live in a world where everyone goes into a movie completely blind. But I’m a realist, and there’s a lot of noise and competition out there. Anyone could spend their Friday night watching a billion Netflix movies at home, so you have to show them what the movie is. I still wish I could bottle up our Beyond Fest screening where no one knew anything, and the reaction to the big reveal was just euphoric. So I would love to preserve that, but unfortunately, I can’t anymore.
Iris’ bathroom mirror moment at the eight-minute mark got me thinking about the possibility. Her difficulty smiling reminded me of Arnold’s T-800’s difficulty smiling in Terminator 2.
I haven’t thought about that until right now. There are slight nods to Terminator and Terminator 2, which are amazing movies. I tried to get Linda Hamilton to do the voice of Josh’s [self-driving] car, but that just proved too difficult. That would’ve been a great little cherry on top. But you are the first person to point out those similarities.
Sophie Thatcher previously played a human with a cybernetic arm on The Book of Boba Fett, and that image parallels your striking visual of Iris’ robot arm being fully exposed. She was already on the rise, but did that overlap point a casting director in her direction?
I didn’t know that she played that part, and we were already far enough along when I saw the still of her with a robot arm. I was like, “Oh shit, can we still do this?” But I didn’t know that she was a human with a robot arm; I just assumed she was playing an android in that part. But the casing of Sophie could be in an interview of itself. I want to say we received 300 self-tapes for the role of Iris, and despite doing 10 or 12 chemistry reads with Jack, no one was really clicking.
The irony is that I thought Iris would be the easier role to cast and that Josh would be the harder role to cast. I thought it would be really hard to find an actor, at that age, who would want to play such a toxic masculine character. But the script got in the hands of Jack Quaid, and he actually reached out to me. I met with him before we even started the casting process, and he was like, “Look, I read the script, and I love it. I want to play Josh.” So that was just an incredibly easy decision. He’s everything I wanted in that role. He’s boyishly handsome, and while you love him immediately, he takes you down this path where buy this guy as a villain. That was a fun math problem that we needed to have for him.
But the Iris part was way more difficult, and I didn’t realize at the time that it’s two roles in one. In the first half, she’s this shrinking, withering violet character that has to be docile and passive, and then she literally becomes activated and turns into an empowered badass. So there were plenty of actors that could do the first half and be very believable, but the big empowering moment where she stands up to Josh just wasn’t believable. Or the exact opposite would happen where the actors would nail the second half where she’s a badass, but as soon as they did the first-half scenes, you just didn’t buy these powerful women as the passive, docile character.
We then did a chemistry read with [Jack and Sophie], and we knew within five seconds. It’s a Hollywood cliché, but as soon as she said her first line, my heart started skipping. I was like, “Oh my God, this is Iris.” But then it became: “Now that we’ve finally found our perfect Iris, how are we going to lose her? This is so meant to be.” So I’m a very pessimistic person, but luckily, it all worked out. She wanted to do the movie, and she’s just incredible in the movie.
Similar to Sophie and Boba Fett, did Jack’s villainous boyfriend role in Scream (2022) give either of you any pause?
Yeah, there was a little bit of hesitancy. You obviously want it to be fresh, and you want it to feel like something he’s never done before. So I went into that first meeting expecting it to not work out, but the reason that he’s so great in the role of Josh is the reason why he won the part. It’s because he came to the table with this boyish goofiness, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him as Josh after that point. So I wish that Josh could be Jack’s first taste of villainy, but Scream 5 beat us to the punch.
When Iris is delivered to Josh’s house, he’s playing Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” on his speaker system. Did he name her after his favorite Goo Goo Dolls track? Or did he decide to welcome a pre-named robot in the corniest way possible?
I don’t want to answer that question. I have an answer, but I want people to come up with their own answers. There is a definitive answer, though.
The technician (Woody Fu) has to look up her name on his tablet. He didn’t know it offhand, so I think that points to Josh being the one who named her Iris.
I like that theory. It’s a good theory.
I thought this question would be a big hit. I wasn’t expecting a coy answer.
It’s just because it’s a fun little Easter egg. I don’t think a lot of people know that “Iris” is the name of that song, and I also love that it has a connection to Jack’s mom, Meg Ryan.
Having seen City of Angels in theaters as a kid, I cannot believe I didn’t connect the dots sooner. “Iris” was written for City of Angels’ soundtrack.
Yeah, for anyone who doesn’t know, Jack Quaid’s mom, Meg Ryan, was in City of Angels, and like Companion, it’s a Warner Bros. movie. So it’s kind of a magical choice that has many layers to it, and that’s why I don’t want to put a pin in it and say, “This is why she’s named Iris.”
Josh says, “Iris, go to sleep,” in the middle of her desperate plea. She’s later woken up, and she immediately resumes where she left off. Were you pretty impressed by Sophie’s ability that day?
I was impressed, and who else was impressed was Sophie. She was more worried about that scene than anything else in the movie, and she almost talked herself out of doing the movie because of that scene’s many emotional shifts. It’s an easy scene to write, but it’s a hard scene to act. But the best compliment I’ve received was from Sophie, as she loves the movie and she particularly loves herself in that scene. I don’t think she knew if she could do it, and while I knew she could do it, she was worried that she didn’t have the chops to do it. But she hit it out of the park, and there were a lot of things going wrong that day as far as lighting. There was a big rainstorm, so there would be takes that were ruined because the clouds would come in and just turn the scene into complete darkness. But she was always able to find that energy as we kept having to go back to it.
You thanked her Boogeyman director Rob Savage. What contribution did he make?
He made multiple. Originally, I had a Zoom meeting with him to potentially write this idea that he was putting together, and Companion was right in the middle of the casting process at the time. So he was talking about his experience on Boogeyman and how an actor backed out at the last minute. He then replaced her with Sophie, and before he replaced her with Sophie, he thought that the actor who left was the only person who could ever play the role. So he was beside himself and upset until Sophie came in and did it so much better than the other actor could have done it. So he was telling me this story to make me feel better about casting: “You never know who the right person is going to be.” And as he was telling me the story, I kept thinking, “Sophie would be great. She’d be a perfect choice.” So he planted the seed of Sophie, and we credited him for that, because I brought her up to pretty much everyone after that Zoom call. He then went to a friends-and-family screening very early on, and he gave great notes. So we owe a lot to Rob Savage.
Josh is able to control Iris via an application on his phone, and it includes an intelligence meter that, per the trailer, Iris ups to 100 percent. Did you qualify 100 percent as Ivy League grad level just because of how difficult it would be to write and perform maximum intellect?
Yeah, I didn’t want to be [2014’s] Lucy. I didn’t want this to be a movie about a robot that becomes so powerful that they suddenly know kung fu and can beat everyone up. At the end of the day, Iris’s journey is one that you, as a human, are supposed to relate to the most, and it’s about her finding empowerment through her journey. So qualifying the hundred percent intelligence as Ivy League level was meant to tell the audience that she’s not going to turn into Lucy; she’s just going to turn into the smartest version of herself. More importantly, she’s going to view the world differently instead of being somewhere between an automaton and someone who filters every choice through the lens of pleasing Josh and what is good for him and his wants. At a hundred percent, she can start viewing the world as a fully realized human being who understands their place.
The next scene is her standing on the edge of a cliff figuring out how she’s going to get out, and she’s thinking like a human by making choices in real time. She’s not a quantum computer making a billion choices per millisecond; she’s just operating at the speed of a really smart human to make her feel relatable. I wanted to hit those signposts of someone who’s exiting a toxic relationship, and that is really what this movie is about. So her becoming a hundred percent intelligent is her now having the self-knowledge to recognize that she is in a toxic relationship and that she needs to escape it. That’s the most important educational moment for her in the movie.
How deep did you dive into Iris’ maker, Empathix?
I didn’t dive too deep. It’s very easy for writers to fetishize the research process and get sucked into the wormhole of over-explaining backstory to themselves. I looked at Empathix like Apple. It’s a technology company that went into robots. Mateo, the guy who brings the robot to Jack’s apartment, is played by an actor named Woody Fu, and he was the only auditioner who played it unlike everyone else who came in to audition. They played it very creepy, almost like a pimp, and it was all very sexual. They were just like, “Yeah, you can do whatever you want with her,” and it was just gross. That’s not what that character is to me, and I was always telling Woody, “It’s Verizon store energy. He’s a guy who goes home to Thanksgiving, and all his family makes fun of him for selling sex bots. So he’s constantly having to say, ‘They do more than have sex! They’re emotional support robots. They’re there for enriching and fulfilling people’s lives.’” So that’s about as far as I would take the backstory of what Empathix is, and it was fun to think about that.
This technology exists, and it is actually at the nascent stages. It’s going to become a part of our society at a certain point, and I didn’t want to ever come from a place of judgment. I didn’t want to judge anyone who leans on a robot for emotional support. The Josh character thinks of Iris as a sex bot and a play thing, but the movie also shows the other side of this technology that could be used for good.
Social media is filled with screenwriting tips, and I saw one recently about hooking the reader on the first page, citing Knives Out as an example. Were you able to fit the “day I killed him” line from the trailer on your first page?
Page two, and that is exactly why I put it on that page. I knew that I had about 20 pages of exposition and setup, and I knew that the story was going to start slow, But then, once the big reveal happens, it’s just pedal to the metal. But you never know when someone is going to throw your script away. There are a billion reasons why your script could end up in the garbage, especially when someone has a pile of screenplays that they’re trying to get through. So you have to give a taste of what to expect, and that was a fun way to introduce the movie and this alternate reality that feels off. There’s also a promise that there’s going to be blood to come. Just stick it out and it’ll be worth it. So it was fully designed so people would continue reading on.
[The answer below contains spoilers for the end of Companion.]
If you were asked, could you pitch a sequel tomorrow?
Warner Bros. wouldn’t want me to write my sequel. My sequel would be showing Iris on the side of the road, cutting out her tracking chip. Then you cut to her on a farm that she’s paid for in cash, and she just lives out her life by watching sunsets and gardening. So I don’t think that Warner Bros. wants to make that version of the sequel. I’m open to her getting involved in a Terminator 2, Aliens-type escalation and building of the world, but the story of Companion, as far as I see it, is in this movie. That’s as far as I want to take it, for sure.
It’s refreshing to hear a director say that for a change.
Cut to the future Hollywood Reporter article: “Drew Hancock Signs Onto Companion 2 for $5 Million.” (Laughs.)
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Companion is now playing in movie theaters.
English (US) ·