Writing and directing a breakout hit can be both a blessing and a curse for some filmmakers. On the one hand, you’ve just achieved your dreams of success and adoration in the world of cinema. Well done. On the other hand, now you have to do it again. And again. And again. Some filmmakers fail at this. Others, especially the great ones, rise to the challenge. George Lucas followed THX 1138 with American Graffiti and Star Wars. Steven Spielberg followed Duel with Sugarland Express and Jaws. Fast forward a few decades, and Quentin Tarantino followed Reservoir Dogs with Pulp Fiction, Wes Anderson followed Bottle Rocket with Rushmore, and Paul Thomas Anderson followed Hard Eight with Boogie Nights, just to name a few. It’s not an exact science, but usually the real measure of a filmmaker is not that first movie; it’s the one (or two) that follows.
Zach Cregger made his mark with the 2022 film Barbarian. The shocking horror ride made it clear he was a force to be reckoned with, and when his next film was ready to go, several major studios wanted it. That movie, called Weapons, shows what happens to a town when a group of children mysteriously vanish. It releases next week, and as we’ve already written about on this site, it’s fantastic. A level up on par with those aforementioned filmmakers, to be sure.
Recently, io9 spoke with Cregger about the pressure to follow up Barbarian. We talked about putting together this much more complex, layered movie and his writing and directing process, as well as a tease of what to expect from his third movie, a new take on Resident Evil. Read all about it below.
Germain Lussier, io9. After Barbarian, I know you said you wanted to go bigger, but did you feel pressure to deliver something equally horrific and surprising again? And were you worried that by doing that the audience might kind of become to expect the same type of thing from you?
Zach Cregger: Um, no. I don’t really think that way. I just kind of wanted to write a story that was on the story’s terms. If I’m thinking result-oriented or what are people gonna think, then I’m doomed. That’s not the right way to be creative. The right way to be creative is to just do it for fun and just do it because you love to do it. To write it because you love to write. So I was able to kind of seal out that sort of result-based thinking.
io9: I read in the press notes that you kind of just sat down after the death of your friend and just wrote this movie. But it’s a pretty complicated movie. So once you had the rough idea, how’d you kind of settle on this structure, when to reveal what, and all the intricacies?
Cregger: Yeah. So look, I sat down, and I kind of puked out a first draft. There are like 70 pages of just emotion on there. And the structure was the structure. So I had the structure in place, but it didn’t really work. It definitely didn’t connect right, and certain things were absolutely broken. And so then I got my 70 pages; it’s time to actually roll up my sleeves and use my brain and fix it. So the first pass is definitely like a really subconscious kind of transcendental state. And then the second pass is like, ‘Okay, time to get brainy here and make it function.’ And that was like a three-week [process]. I went to my manager’s house in the woods on the East Coast, and I didn’t do anything for three weeks. All I did all day was just work on it. And I got it in shape.
io9: You also mentioned in the press notes that when you sat down to write the script, you had the idea of the missing kids but didn’t know the why of it yet.
Cregger: Right.
io9: That’s obviously the whole point of the movie, and we’re not going to spoil it, but I’m curious, what was the process of figuring it out? Did you get to the point in the script and you’re like, “Now I need to have this answer?” Did you make a list? Was the process of settling on what you were going to do?
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