‘A Quiet Place: Day One’: Michael Sarnoski Talks Subverting Blockbusters, Potential Sequels & His ‘Robin Hood’ Movie With Hugh Jackman

Welcome back to Deep Focus. In this week’s episode, host Rodrigo Perez, also the Editor-in-Chief of The Playlist.net taslks to Michael Sarnoski, the writer and director of “A Quiet Place: Day One” which is now available to rent or buy digitally from Paramount Home Entertainment.

 

Sarnoski, as you probably know launched his career with the quiet and delicate indie “Pig” which featured a beautifully nuanced performance out of Nicolas Cage. For his “A Quiet Place” spin-off prequel, when John Krasinski, the writer/director of the previous two franchise installments called Sarnoski to pitch him the project, he wondered if the filmmaker would want to bring his “Pig” touch to the franchise.

 

Sarnoski went away, thought about it a bit, and pitched his take on the movie, something epic in scale set in New York, but in many ways, deeply human, character driven and subverting a lot of blockbuster tropes in the meantime. And they all went for it. And when Krasinski said he wanted some of that “Pig” touch brought into the ‘Quiet Place’ franchise, well he got exactly that and maybe more.

 

As you may already know, ‘Day One’ flashes back to the first day of the invasion by deadly creatures who hunt by sound in one of the loudest places on Earth: New York City.  Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn give emotionally devastating and riveting performances as strangers who embark on a harrowing journey through the eerily quiet streets of Manhattan in order to just get a slice of pizza.

 

I spoke to Sarnoski all about the pitching of the film, the creation of the film, working with John Krasinski, Jeff Nichols’ version of the script—he was the first filmmaker on the project but bowed out—whether he would ever attempt more ‘A Quiet Place’ sequel and his upcoming next film, “The Death Of Robin Hood” which will star Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer.