Writer/director Drew Hancock is one of the first people who will admit that his original idea for Companion, and the first few drafts of his script, were “really bad”.
“When I first had the idea, it felt magical, like it was almost meant to be; three couples go to a cabin in the woods, one of them finds out they’re a robot about to be “shut down”, and it would be a horror where the robot killed someone every ten minutes”, he told Zavvi. “My inclination was to make the AI the antagonist, to make another story about AI gone wrong – but as I was writing, I found myself relating to the robot more.
“She was worried about meeting her partner’s friends and screwing up socially, and all of us have felt alienation like that. It made me take a step back and realise she was the most human character – and that was where I began to wonder whether it would be possible to make a story about “AI gone right”.
Iris, played by Sophie Thatcher, is undoubtedly the most empathetic figure in Hancock’s directorial debut, not least because she’s the audience surrogate during the remote getaway with her controlling partner Josh (Jack Quaid) and his insufferable friends. Over the course of the weekend, she discovers that she’s not human but a “companion bot”, and without spoiling anything, her resulting rampage will quite firmly put you on the side of AI.
Hancock continued: “There’s no shortage of AI gone wrong movies, and I’m so glad I took a different approach, not least because M3GAN came out just after I finished the script! But I don’t want anybody to think this is me intentionally thinking we need to see a softer side of AI, so much as a more interesting side; this is a tool that humans use, and when it goes wrong, it’s because of how a human programmed it.”
So even though this story gives us an artificially intelligent hero, don’t perceive it as propaganda for the controversial tech. As the director explained, Iris is only as empathetic as she is because she was thrown into a painful social situation he’d experienced many times.
“I didn’t realise how much of myself I’d put into her until I finished the first draft. I realised this is a story about imposter syndrome, about someone who feels like they’re less than human, thrown into a scenario where her weaknesses are exploited, and she discovers her worst fears are true.
“This story is about her path to self-discovery, firstly coming to terms with who she is and finding empowerment through that to escape the toxic relationship she’s been forced into.”
Companion bends genres, mixing the core science-fiction conceit with a stripped-down noir story which – again, without spoiling anything beyond the trailer – leads to double crosses, morally knotty twists, and the pursuit of a big bag of money. I assumed Hancock was looking to the classics of the genre for inspiration, putting his own fresh twist on a vintage conceit, but it turned out this was the last piece of the puzzle.
“I had written many, many bad drafts of the script before the heist element came in, and it was the idea that activated everything. An easy writing tip for anyone is that if you need a good motivation for a bad guy, just make it money and greed, as nobody questions it, and makes you understand every bad decision they make!
“I’m a big believer of endlessly rewriting until the story tells you how it wants to be told, it’s a long process but it naturally finds itself. That element came very late, but I’m so glad it did.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Jack Quaid play a bad guy, but considering he has a reputation as one of the nicest men in Hollywood, I was curious as to why he’s frequently cast against type.
“I don’t think of actors whilst writing, because if you inevitably don’t get the actor you had in mind, it’s just heartbreak. However, I do think about the boxes that need to be checked, and it was crucial Josh was likeable because he was saying very unlikable things, such as telling a woman to smile and act happy in the first five minutes – there's no version of that which isn’t malicious!
“Jack is so charismatic, and doesn’t have a shred of Josh in him, he’s a very endearing man. What he’s good at is coming to it from the place of the man child, a guy who doesn’t know any better who you could perceive as a loving, doofus boyfriend if you didn’t investigate his behaviour too closely.”
Once he’d found his characters, Hancock had one last challenge: to make sure that his twist-heavy movie was more than the sum of its rug pulls, and could continue to excite viewers on multiple viewings, when they knew where his story was headed.
“If you’re making a movie with a twist, you have to decide early on about where it will be revealed – it changes what the movie is depending on whether it’s in the first five pages, the third act, or anywhere in-between. I knew I didn’t want any third act reveals, because then it becomes a “twist movie”, which the audience watches differently to other films.
“I didn’t want to make a puzzle box movie where audiences put every character under a microscope and overthink their motivations. The first reveal, that Iris is a robot, had to happen early on, so the audience can be put in a space where they didn’t realise a twist would arrive so soon – it gives people the permission to sit back and let the movie take them on an adventure they don’t need to analyse.”
Once completed, the screenplay fell into the hands of Zach Cregger, who initially was going to make it his follow-up to the similarly twisty, genre-defying Barbarian. During their early conversations, Cregger realised that Hancock should direct it, signing on as a Producer to help take the writer’s vision to the finish line.
It was a nerve-wracking moment for Hancock, who hadn’t even considered that he could be the one to make it.
“I was never against the idea, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of it. I’ve been in the business for a long time, from TV to rewrites on movies, and I know that directing is a tremendous amount of stress; Zach said the best thing he could do was to take a step back and be a mentor who could shepherd me through this process.
“It took two days of panic before realising I’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity, as not everyone gets this call. Every mistake you make in this business is designed to help build up your confidence to direct something, and I’m so glad I took the risk – I'd rather be here talking to you than being stuck in my apartment having not done it!”
Companion is released in UK cinemas on 31st January.
