This report comes from Fantastic Fest 2024, the annual genre film festival in Austin, Texas. We’ll have more on-site reports throughout the festival.
Hereticthe upcoming A24 horror film from A quiet place Writer and Track And 65 The film, produced by directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, is by far not the first in which Hugh Grant appears as a villain. Paddington2, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Operation Fortune: StratagemAnd The downfall are just some of his dark roles. But as Woods and Beck revealed in a Q&A after a surprise screening of Heretic At Fantastic Fest, none of these films inspired her to cast Grant as a villain in her film.
Heretic Stars Yellow Jackets“Sophie Thatcher and The Fabelmans“Chloe East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, a Mormon missionary couple whose door-to-door missionary work brings them into contact with Grant’s character, Mr. Reed, a charming man whose malicious intentions toward them are only fully revealed as the film progresses.”
Beck put it this way: “When we had the script in hand, we were faced with a huge question: Who can perform something that seemingly feels like a stage play? It has to be someone who opens the door and doesn’t immediately make you feel like alarm bells are going off everywhere. If that’s the case, then Paxton and Barnes don’t seem intelligent. And that’s the whole backbone of this film, that they are incredibly intelligent and smart in all their decisions. We tried to find out during the casting who could do that. And suddenly we started thinking about seeing, Cloud Atlas in 2012.”
“Every time we watch a film together, the credits roll and then we turn to each other as if we Oh, what do you think?“, said Woods. “And Cloud Atlas is an insane, ambitious, beautiful, crazy film. And it’s like, what do you even say to Cloud Atlas when the credits roll? We just sat there in silence, stunned, so, What are we talking about? And Scott turns to me and says, “Hugh Grant!” And I’m like, “I know!” It’s so great to see someone at that point in his career who is challenging himself and is obviously excited to do something crazy. And then he spent the next 10 years doing that in our eyes and became the greatest character actor in the world. When we started considering him for that role, we were just so, so excited.”
Like most of the main actors in Cloud AtlasGrant plays a variety of roles in different eras and locations in history, from New Zealand in 1849 to post-apocalyptic Hawaii in 2321. Based on David Mitchell’s novel of the same name and co-directed by Tom Tykwer and Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the film explores the idea that the same souls are reincarnated in different bodies from age to age, giving the main cast (including Grant, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Susan Sarandon, to name a few) the opportunity to play roles that extend far beyond their usual range.
In Grant’s case, this meant a departure from his usual modest leading roles, often in romantic comedies: In Cloud AtlasHis roles include a malicious priest, a malicious CEO, a malicious overseer, and a cannibal chief.
“I mean, it felt to us like we had seen him for the first time in the American cinema, with Four weddings and a funeralwhen that came across in 1994, this person was very charming and very approachable,” said Beck. “And he built this relationship with the audience – we thought We like the idea of turning it into a weapon, turning it on its head, and taking everything the audience loves about it and turning it into something terrifying in a flash. It is something we love – like when we saw Drunken Love in 2002, and Adam Sandler took what he knows but turned it completely on its head and found the relationship with the audience that made it accessible, but then [he] make it something completely unique. That was the goal we had when we brought Hugh on board.”
Heretic will be released in US theaters on November 8th.
