Until Dawn 2 Could Happen, Says Movie’s Director

Helming consecutive $100-million–plus-budgeted DC movies seems like two of the most arduous jobs a director can have, but David F. Sandberg insists that his latest film, Until Dawn, was more challenging than either of his Shazam! movies. 

When The Hollywood Reporter last caught up with Sandberg during the release of Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), he couldn’t wait to return to his home base in the horror genre. After all, he’d just been through a whirlwind experience that included a last-minute rewrite of Shazam 2’s mid-credit scene due to studio politics, as well as Visa issues that forced him to direct a Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) cameo remotely. If that wasn’t enough, the Swedish filmmaker was caught off guard when that very cameo was revealed by the studio’s late-stage marketing efforts. He also had to face all sorts of unanswerable questions at the time about the future of the DC universe now that it was in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s hands. And to top it all off, Sandberg had to miss his L.A. premiere due to Covid.

Knowing that he wanted to return to the genre that launched his career via Lights Out (2016) and Annabelle: Creation (2017), the writer of the latter, Gary Dauberman, sent Sandberg a script that he and Blair Butler would ultimately co-write. The project was a big-screen adaptation of the 2015 interactive survival-horror game, Until Dawn, and Sandberg immediately responded to the storyline that refreshes the PlayStation game’s premise without repeating it.

The film chronicles Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends’ journey to a defunct mining town in order to find some trace of what happened to Clover’s missing sister a year earlier. They end up stopping at an abandoned visitor center which initiates a deadly game with only a limited number of chances to revive themselves. The concept also flips the mechanics of the time-loop movie on their head by creating an entirely different scenario for the characters to experience following each of their preceding deaths. That dynamic also allowed Sandberg to play with many different subgenres of horror within one movie.

“I was like, ‘Well, this is awesome because it has every horror genre. I’ll get to do slasher, supernatural, body horror, monster and found footage.’ It had everything in one movie, which is what really drew me to it,” Sandberg tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Until Dawn’s April 25 theatrical release.

What turned Until Dawn into an even greater challenge than Sandberg’s superhero work involves his prioritization of practical effects over visual effects. That approach is all the more difficult when making a genre film on a tight schedule for the reasonable sum $15 million. If one bloody take doesn’t go as planned, the crew has to reset the stage and the actor, and a labor-intensive effort like that can quickly deplete the minimal time the production has left. That’s often why producers lean more toward VFX these days since there’s more predictability and a greater likelihood of staying on schedule.

“I wanted to do [practical effects] because I’ve always wanted to do them, but I understand why they’re not done as often anymore. Schedules are getting shorter and shorter on movies, and these things take time. You only get one shot, maybe two,” Sandberg explains. “Once you have blood flying everywhere, sometimes you can’t even clean it up. So it’s much easier when it’s just something that’s added after … But it is much scarier to do it this way.”

The opportunity also allowed Sandberg the chance to finally work with a hero from his homeland of Sweden, Peter Stormare. The Swedish actor already played a key figure in the video game, and so Sandberg hoped he could achieve both the crossover between mediums and his own long-running goal of collaboration. 

“Growing up in Sweden and seeing him in these big Hollywood movies like Armageddon, Fargo and Jurassic Park 2, I was always like, ‘He’s Swedish, like me! He proves that you can go to Hollywood and have a career,’” Sandberg says. “So I’ve been wanting to work with him since Lights Out. I actually tried to get him a part in that, but the studio felt that he was too creepy to play a family man.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Sandberg also discusses the blessing he received from Sony and PlayStation to not dial back the game’s gore, before addressing the endless possibilities for an Until Dawn sequel.

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I re-listened to our Shazam 2 conversation, and while you were recovering from Covid, you told me the story of the politics behind the last-minute rewrite of the mid-credit scene. Then there was directing Wonder Woman from home, a marketing surprise and releasing a movie in a changing universe. Thus, was your return to the friendly confines of the horror genre exactly what you needed after that last experience?

(Laughs.) Yes, but Until Dawn was a more complicated movie than any of the Shazam! movies. It was very hard to make this movie, and it was a very ambitious movie for the time and the money we had. But I was so eager to do horror again, and this was a dream come true in that I got to do lots of full-on R-rated kills and gore and special effects and special makeup and monsters. I’ve been wanting to do all of these things since I was a little kid. So that was very welcomed, but it was a challenge, for sure. 

You also told me about a development project with James Wan and Atomic Monster. Did Until Dawn swoop in shortly thereafter? 

I’m not even sure what project that was referring to. The thing here in Hollywood is that you have to have all these irons in the fire because you never know what project is going to happen and when some are going to fall off. So you always have a few projects brewing, and then you see what happens. But James is someone I love working with; he’s a horror master, and we’re always looking at things to do together. But I don’t even remember which one that was. So many different projects fall away.

Well, you were coming out of Covid at the time.

Maybe I was just making things up. (Laughs.)

Were you and your Annabelle: Creation writer Gary Dauberman a package deal on Until Dawn? Or did one convince the other?

It started with Gary. I had such a great time on Annabelle: Creation, which he wrote, of course. I wanted to do a horror movie after Shazam!, but there wasn’t time because we had to do Shazam! Fury of the Gods before the kids got too old. So then after Shazam 2, it had been a few years, and I really wanted to do horror again. Gary then got in touch to say that he wrote this script with Blair Butler that’s based on the game Until Dawn, and he sent it over. And I was like, “Well, this is awesome because it has every horror genre. I don’t even have to choose. I’ll get to do slasher, supernatural, body horror, monster and found footage.” It had everything in one movie, which is what really drew me to it. 

I also loved the fact that they didn’t try to just do the game again, because the game was already so cinematic. It plays pretty much like a movie that you’re a part of, so how do you do that in movie form and not have it be compared unfavorably? You’re just never going to live up to the game. So I love that they expanded upon the universe that was established in the game rather than trying to do the same thing that everyone has already played and seen.

As soon as the uninitiated audience wonders whether Until Dawn is just another time-loop movie, you answer that question in real time to say that it’s not. Each life or round changes, hence the fluid genre.

Yeah, that’s what was so fun. You already have movies like Happy Death Day, which did time loop brilliantly. So, no, this is not the same thing. The killer is not always going to come from over there, and the same things aren’t going to happen. There’s a new threat every night. So this felt like a fresh spin on the time-loop device.

You prioritized practical effects on this movie, and it’s often said that they’re more expensive than visual effects now. Is that the primary reason why they’ve become less utilized?

I wanted to do [practical effects] because I’ve always wanted to do them, but I understand why they’re not done as often anymore. It’s all about time. Schedules are getting shorter and shorter on movies, and these things take time. You only get one shot, maybe two. Once you have blood flying everywhere, sometimes you can’t even clean it up. There’s a scene in this movie that we had to schedule for the last day because we completely ruined the set with blood going everywhere. So it’s much easier when it’s just something that’s added after, because then you can do several takes to get the right performance and everything. But it is much scarier to do it this way.

So I was prepared to do it, but we did run out of time. It was a very ambitious movie for the schedule we had, so we had to improvise, sometimes. There’s a scene where Max [Michael Cimino] is in the witch’s house, and there’s a rocking chair with a clown doll on it. That scene wasn’t supposed to be that. It was supposed to be a big scene with stunts, throat-cutting and all kinds of things, but we ran out of time. So I had to improvise something creepy with the rocking chair and the doll, and that’s when it really helped to be a lifelong horror fan. And having done horror before, I had the experience to come up with something on the fly and make it work.

And because of the practical effects, your actors had to be even more on point than usual to avoid lengthy resets between takes?

For sure, and it was very challenging for them as well. It wasn’t just working nights and working in these cold tunnels underneath Budapest. I had to warn them before, and I told Ella [Rubin], in particular, “Listen, you’re going to be cold. Every night Clover starts in the rain, so you’re going to be wet. You’re going to be bloody and muddy. It’s going to be a very physical part.” She was up for it, but I don’t think she quite realized just how physical it was going to be. The actors still loved getting to go for it and scream without having to look perfect. It’s a liberating thing to do horror movies like this.

The Post-it note video you recently published is really cool, as you were trying out one of Megan’s (Ji-young Yoo) various makeup effects in the movie at home. Does a lot of your prep begin with you and your partner (Lotta Losten) testing the waters in creatively crude ways?

Yeah, we love doing little horror shorts and things on our own. I really love the magic-trick aspect to it, and trying to be clever with camera angles and hidden cuts and things like that. There’s something very satisfying and fun about that. Lotta and I have been making horror movies and little short films together for over a decade now, and this is the first time where she’s a full-on producer. This is something we’ve been working towards since we first got [to the States]. She should have been a producer on Lights Out because we did the short film together, but we were afraid of asking for too much. We didn’t want Hollywood to go, “No, you’re asking for too much. Deal’s off.” But now we’ve finally reached the stage where we can work together fully, and we have our own little production company. So this is the first movie that we’ve done under our label, Mångata.

It’s always interesting when the same performer crosses mediums. Did the Swedish connection also make Peter Stormare a must-get from the game?

Yeah, because he’s in the game, we had to have the connection in the movie. He’s a very important character. But as a Swede, he’s always been a hero. Growing up in Sweden and seeing him in these big Hollywood movies like Armageddon, Fargo and Jurassic Park 2, I was always like, “He’s Swedish, like me! He proves that you can go to Hollywood and have a career.” So I’ve been wanting to work with him since Lights Out. I actually tried to get him a part in that, but the studio felt that he was too creepy to play a family man.

So I’ve been wanting to work with him for ten years now, and I wrote him a letter in Swedish to ask him to be in Until Dawn. He didn’t have to be in this movie, but I told him how big of a fan I was. And he was like, “Oh, you’re Swedish? We can talk shit [in Swedish] about everyone on set because they won’t know what we’re saying.” So he came on board because he cares very much about the character of Hill, and he wanted to get it right.

Did there end up being any Swedish “shit-talk”?

(Laughs.) No, he’s the loveliest guy. He always plays these scary, creepy weirdos, but then he shows up to set with his Hello Kitty backpack. He’s a big Hello Kitty fan. So it’s like, “Well, you’re not scary at all. You’re the loveliest man.”

Until Dawn is your first movie without producer Walt Hamada. Did you enjoy having a new set of voices on this one?

Yeah, and I loved working with Walt. He’s a filmmaker. He really thinks about how film works and how to make the best movie. But we had a great producing team on Until Dawn, including Gary and Lotta. PlayStation and Sony were also really great, especially PlayStation, because they really care about the game and everything. For example, the game is very violent, and it’s quite gory. So it was important to me that the movie’s gore wasn’t less than the game. We had to match it. So the studio and PlayStation were fully on board: “Yeah, you have to match the game; you can’t scale back.”

The missing poster motif for the end credits was a nice touch. Was the filmmaking team eager to put a face to the name? 

That was an idea I had while we were shooting it. I thought it would be really fun for the end credits to have missing posters of the whole crew and cast on that board. So I wanted to do that, but I was also clear to everyone, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.” The editor, Michel Aller, chose a childhood picture of herself, so it looks like a child edited this movie. (Laughs.) When I showed the movie to everyone else, they were so envious of her. They were like, “You could use a childhood picture? What the fuck!? Why didn’t I think of that?” But everyone thought it was a fun idea to do that, and I love it because you get to see the people who made the movie, for a change.

Until Dawn leaves an intriguing avenue for a sequel. Are you open to it in success?

I’m always open to anything. I just want to focus on one movie, get it done, and then take a break to catch my breath before seeing what happens. But, for sure, you could do much more with Until Dawn. You could again have different horror genres involving another group of people. You could do almost anything with this, so it’s certainly possible. 

But whenever I finish a movie, I feel like I never want to do a movie again. (Laughs.) It’s such a challenge, and it’s so tough. There’s so much anxiety and lack of sleep, but then I just can’t stay away from it. I have to make movies. So, right now, I feel like, “I don’t want to make another movie ever,” but then I’ll do another movie.

Lastly, to ask you the same existential question that Ella Rubin’s Clover and Michael Cimino’s Max discuss amongst themselves, do we restart when we perish? Or do we get one meaningful go-round? 

Well, like Max says, I hope not. I think you get one life, and you want to make the best of it. So I hope we don’t restart. It’s like, “I have to do this again? It wasn’t easy [the first time].”

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Until Dawn opens April 25 in movie theaters nationwide.