Elevation interview | Producer Brad Fuller on creature features, genre filmmaking, Platinum Dunes

Producer Brad Fuller talks to us about A Quiet Place, making genre films on a budget, and his latest sci-fi thriller, Elevation.

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“I’m speaking to you from jail,” producer Brad Fuller says as he appears on a video call from Brisbane, Australia. And, sure enough, he’s sitting directly in front of a large window with horizontal white bars running across it. This is, he tells us, the set of Anaconda – presumably some back office somewhere – his latest project, and one of a string of genre movies he’s steered over the past quarter of a century.

Fuller is a genuine fan of horror, action and creature features. Aside from the aforementioned snake movie – a meta reworking of the 1997 B-movie of the same name – he’s also produced A Quiet Place and its numerous sequels and prequels. At production company Platinum Dunes – which he co-founded in 2001 with Michael Bay – he’s produced a raft of remakes, including The Amityville Horror (2005) and The Hitcher (2007). 

His latest project is Elevation, a tense sci-fi thriller directed by The Adjustment Bureau filmmaker (and future Star Wars writer) George Nolfi. Anthony Mackie plays Will, one of a handful people who’ve narrowly survived a monster apocalypse. A horde of large, rhino-like creatures have overrun Earth; impervious to bullets, their only weakness appears to be their inability to scale heights above 8,000 feet. 

The remaining five percent of the human population are holed up in tiny communities in the mountains; but a medical emergency forces Will to head into the danger zone in search of supplies. He’s joined by two other survivors – downtrodden scientist Nina (Morena Baccarin) and 20-something Kate (Maddie Hasson) in his dangerous quest.

As Elevation readies for its streaming debut – look out for it on Prime Video from the 8th February – Fuller talks to us about its tough Colorado shoot, making genre movies on a budget, and his desire to make a Shane Black action thriller…

Where on Earth are you? 

We’re making Anaconda in Brisbane. 

Oh, wow. I was only writing about this yesterday. 

You did?

Yeah, because there was a little bit of casting news, wasn’t there. Steve Zahn joined the cast, and Thandiwe Newton as well. 

Yes, that’s who I’m with, and Paul [Rudd] and Jack [Black]. 

I’m looking forward to seeing that. I enjoyed the original, the 1997 one. 

This is a comedy. It’s going well. Today is day 17. 

Congratulations on Elevation. Er, which rhymes. What I enjoy about films like this is that you’re seeing a small corner of a much bigger world. Is that what appealed to you in the script?

I always respond to something like that. I mean, if I think about the material that gets me excited, I’m just going over the most recent things in my head. The Purge just took place in a house, you know, but we knew it was a bigger idea. And for A Quiet Place, too – we were on a farm for the first one, and we’ve tried to grow that. 

I felt the same way with this: it’s such a huge story, but we’re just going to learn about this [handful of] people and see how they deal with it. And if the audience wants more, we’ll give them more. 

I was reading about how it came about, and the three writers came up with it while eating dinner. It sort of bubbled up. Did the story evolve much after you read the first draft? 

I mean, every script evolves, of course, during production, when you get actors and whatnot, but the concept was always there. That stayed intact. I’d have to go back and read the original draft, but I think it was all very close.

George [Nolfi, director] came on, and I loved working with George. We had a really good experience together. But George had just come off The Banker with [Anthony] Mackey, and Mackey also had been in The Adjustment Bureau, so he and George had a great relationship. We were looking for a strong male lead, and that was an easy call for George to make.

This isn’t a low budget film, but it’s a similar sort of level to A Quiet Place, isn’t it? So are you working around certain confines there when you’re telling this?

Yes, you always have to work in confines. I think this movie was a little bit more expensive than the first Quiet Place, but George was adamant about shooting in Colorado. And Colorado is a beautiful, beautiful place to work, and I’m grateful that I did. 

There hasn’t been a movie shot there since the 1950s because there’s no incentive to – there’s no tax incentive. It’s an expensive place to make a film, and there’s no crew base. So we put ourselves in a tricky spot by shooting there, but we also felt that the location is as big a star as anything else, and we really wanted to feature the beauty that Colorado has to offer in Boulder, specifically, which is where we shot. 

Read more: Elevation | Director George Nolfi on monster metaphors, original scripts and writing Star Wars

So that was an expensive choice. I’m grateful to Lyrical, who financed the movie, for supporting George in doing that, because nowadays, when I’m lucky enough to be on a film, there’s no discussion: the studio just says you’re going here. 

For example, I’m sitting here in Australia, and I think this is where Sony sends a lot of their films. I know the last film that Sony just finished – a movie called The Rising, they shot that here. And it feels like movies are going that way. After Elevation, I made two movies in Dublin. It’s getting harder and harder to shoot a movie in the United States. We did A Quiet Place: Day One in London, and we did Apartment 7A in London. So it’s very hard to shoot a movie in the United States, but I was very grateful that Lyrical let us shoot Elevation.

That’s one of the things I appreciated in this: you actually feel like you’re out there in the elements.

We were, I’m telling you we were. It’s cold!

I read that you’re quite a hands-on producer. You like to actually be out there on set.

If I’m making a film, and I can physically be there [then I will]. It’s a challenge when we’re making two things at once, but I want to be on the films that I’m producing. I don’t want to hear about it from someone else if there’s a problem or if things are going well. I want to be there.

To be fair, it wasn’t always my choice. When I started making movies with Michael Bay, 25 years ago, he said to me, ‘You’re not allowed to leave the set, and anything that goes wrong is on you, so you better be there so that if I see something I don’t like, you can tell me why it happened.’ 

So that’s kind of how I was raised as a producer, and I can’t break that habit.

So what were the challenges of creating a monster movie in these locations, because you need something on set for the actors to react to, and you’re out in the open rather than on a stage.

I think that actors nowadays have some sense of that. When I think about A Quiet Place, [the monster] was a tennis ball, and here on Anaconda, it’s kind of the head of a snake, and it’s all green. I mean, I think actors are used to understanding that they’re going to have to react to something that doesn’t exist in the real world. And for us, we didn’t know our alien design until we had shot the movie. It’s not like we could have. We had a sense of what it was going to look like. But you just say to the actors, ‘this is where it is,’ and they kind of go with it. I think they’re used to that.

You’ve made a lot of genre movies over your career: science fiction and horror and thrillers are clearly a passion of yours. Where did that come from? What sort of films were you watching when you were studying film at university?

I went to college with Michael Bay, and we would get into fights with our other classmates. Because Bay and I always loved really commercial films. And so my favorite films in college were Lethal Weapon, Risky Business, Beverly Hills Cop, Braveheart, and probably The Godfather. And everyone else we went to school with was into very esoteric films that I just couldn’t figure out why people would want to see that. I mean, my whole professional life has been about getting people into the theater, and having this experience where everyone’s kind of trying to feel the same thing at the same time. That makes it better. So and for better, for worse, horror movies, especially, are something that, if you do it right, that’s exactly what happens.

There’s nothing better for me, when I’m sitting in an audience and the whole audience jumps at the same time, and then they start laughing after it. That’s a wonderful thing to be a part of. And so that’s kind of what we’ve always strived for. There are other genres that I’d like to make. Right now, I’m making a kind of a comedy that has horror, or a horror movie that has comedy, and, you know, it’s nice. This is the first time I’ve ever been laughing behind the monitor. I’ve never had that happen. 

But also, one day I really want to make a big action movie. Those are the movies I always loved, and Michael Bay is a great partner to do that with. And so I’m looking for that as well. Does that answer the question?

Yeah. It’s interesting. I spoke to John Krasinski about A Quiet Place years ago, and he talked about the similarity between horror and comedy: there’s a build up of tension, and then you get the punch line and you get the release. Do you feel the same way as a producer?

I do, but I feel like I have a sense when I’m shooting a scene that has a scare. From all the movies I’ve done, I feel like I have a sense of if it’s going to work. But with comedy, I’ve never done it before, and I have no idea. I just know what I find funny, and I don’t know if anyone else does. So we’ll see how that works out on this movie [Anaconda]. 

I knew, in Elevation, though, I knew that the action sequences were smart, and there were sequences that I was so excited to be a part of and to watch them get done. Like the chair lift sequence – that was something George really worked on for so long, and I was very happy with the way that was realised in the movie… I’m very proud of the way that George executed all that stuff.

Which of those was the most technically challenging? Was it necessarily the outdoor stuff, or was it, was it the things that are more confined, like the sequences in the mine?

I worked in so many different locations, and George insisted that we shot that mine sequence in [a real] mine. And I did not like being in that mine. I felt really constricted. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I just, I left the location I went up on because we were way underground. That was another reason George wanted to shoot in Colorado: he knew he could get those mines, and no one had ever shot in a location like that. But I think that the mine sequence brought its own challenges, and the chair lift sequence, for sure, brought its own challenges. 

And then at the end of the movie, when Anthony runs up that hill, it sounds like a very banal thing, but running up that hill was… that’s a hard thing to do. It’s a real hill, and he’s running up and he could get hurt. And we talked about that for a long time, too. So, in every action sequence, George really deliberated… They were all really challenging.

You mentioned Platinum Dunes.You were initially better known for horror remakes, and then gradually you made original movies like A Quiet Place. Was that a deliberate roadmap? Did you sit together and talk about that – a 10 year plan, say?

No. The answer to that is no. I think that the way it went down is we were presented with the rights to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And Michael, at the time, was in post on Armageddon, and he was at the height. His career could not have been better, and I was lucky enough that he chose me and Andrew Form [co-founder] to run this company. 

We had made a couple of movies, but we were not the choice that anyone would have made to do this company, and Bay was very generous by giving us that opportunity. Platinum Dunes, by the way, is the name of the first short that Michael directed, that I produced when we were kids. That was what it was.

 I think if you asked Michael that question, he would say that the remakes were like film school for me: learning how to make movies and how to make a scare and deliver something on budget. So when the first one worked, when Texas Chainsaw worked, suddenly people seemed to believe that we had the secret sauce. I don’t think we did, but as soon as Texas Chainsaw came out, they presented us with Amityville. And as soon as Amityville worked, they presented us with Friday The 13th, and then we said, ‘We want Nightmare on Elm Street.’ 

So of those first films that we made, four of them, thankfully, were all successful at the box office, and it launched our company. But it was not like you asked in your question. It was not by design. 

I just felt like I was lucky to be making another movie. I had no idea what would happen with them. And then I think what happened to the company after we made those four remakes, is, I felt like we weren’t getting jobs. We were not being presented with other opportunities. And I felt like the remake thing had stopped working. 

This is, I’m talking about 2010, and [Jason] Blum had come out with Paranormal Activity. Horror had changed, and we hadn’t changed with it. We sat idle for two years, and it was really scary. I was concerned that we were done. I mean, I really felt like this is over.

Frankly, I give Jason Blum a lot of credit, because I didn’t know him. I wrote him an email. Because Paranormal was all anyone spoke about at that time, I sent him an email. The email was very simple, and it said, 

‘You’ve stolen my career. The least you can do is buy me a cup of coffee.’ 

And to his credit, he wrote me right back. 

We met the next day, and we had a coffee, and we talked, and he said to me, ‘I’m going to do this movie Insidious. I just read [another] script that I like. If you like it, why don’t we try and work together?’ 

The script was for The Purge. I just finished my eighth movie with Blumhouse, so it was a very fruitful coffee that I had. And, you know, the remake business wasn’t just what our business was. I think a lot of doors opened, but we still do remakes. We did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and we’re doing Anaconda now, so it’s not like we won’t do them, but I think if we’re going to do a remake, then there has to be a real reason to do it. There has to be a big enough idea, like Anaconda as a comedy, to me, is a fun movie, right? If we’re just first Anaconda, with J-Lo and Ice Cube, that’s not gonna work. 

That’s fascinating. I guess the industry itself has changed as well since 2010, especially with home media. At one stage, you could rely on DVD sales to bring in money, and that’s largely been replaced by streaming. I wonder if, from your point of view, streaming is as financially reliable as DVD was, say, 10, 15 years ago.

I don’t think it’s as reliable. I’ve never set out to make a movie for streaming. We’ve had it happen once. We made a movie for Paramount that went to streaming last year called Apartment 7A which was a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby.

I’m a kid who saw movies in the movie theater, and that’s how I want it – to the extent that I can control it, I always want any movie that I make to be seen in a movie theater. I just do. There’s nothing the matter, necessarily, with streaming. But I’m trying to create a communal experience where people are all feeling the same thing at once. And especially with a horror movie, it’s very hard for me to get my head around the fact that people can pause, walk away, come back. 

I mean, you’re trying to build a rhythm, and it’s hard to do that with people doing that at home. So my first goal is always to make something that’s going to be theatrical.

You mentioned The Purge. That was an original script. Elevation is an original script. A Quiet Place is an original concept. Does that mean that there’s still an appetite in Hollywood for original ideas? Is the spec script still alive in Hollywood?

I think it is. But it’s not the spec script. I just finished a movie for Universal called Drop. Actually, the trailer is coming out tomorrow. That was a movie that we put together. We loved the concept, and we had a budget number in our head, because I think that once a movie gets too expensive, it’s very risky for the studios. 

If you can present something good for a number… I like to be under $20 million for most of our films. If you can do it for less than that, then they might be willing to take more of a risk. 

I’ll just tell you this: Anaconda is more expensive than $20 million. I’m having a great time working with Paul Rudd and Jack Black. But also, when you have big movie stars in there, the movies get really expensive. And then if the movies are too expensive… I want our movies to make money for our partners first, and then we’ll be fine after that. I don’t want people to lose money. And we’ve been pretty lucky that way. 

So what is it about that sort of $15m, under $20m budget? Why is that a sweet spot? 

There’s something that Bay said to me when we started the company that I think about every day. What he said is, “I want you to try and make movies that can get back their production budget on their opening weekend.” 

If you’re lucky. If you look traditionally at horror movies, looking back before COVID, $15m to $20m, that used to be what a decent horror movie would open to. It’s different now, but that’s what it was. And so in my mind, that’s kind of the safe number. I think it’s probably lower than $15m now. It could be closer to $10m, but it’s really hard to make a movie for less than that, if you have actors that audiences recognise.

So how come you’ve not made an action movie yet? Have you ever thought about contacting Shane Black, given your love of Lethal Weapon?

I have had many meetings with Shane Black. I tried to get… Shane Black was looking for a producer on a movie early last year. I tried to get on that movie. I would love to do anything with Shane Black, but that just hasn’t happened. 

I mean, for Platinum Dunes to do an action movie, I would want to employ the same guidelines. I’d want it to be less expensive than most action movies are, and try and figure that out. And Michael is very helpful when it comes to that, but  those scripts don’t exist out there, like a great $25m [concept]. You know, like the script to John Wick. That’s one in a trillion. You know how good that script was, and what Basil [Iwanyk, producer] has turned that into. It’s incredible. But I have not found that type of material being readily available.

That’s really interesting. There are lots of action movies around, but I guess it’s a case of finding an original angle?

Right. Because action is a segment of the market that is really overplayed, and it’s overplayed by people who, I think, for a long time, [conned] the audience by getting an actor they love to be in the movie for two or three days, and the movies didn’t hold up the way that they should have. So I think it’s harder to get audiences to trust that an action movie is really going to be great. But when it works, I love watching a great action film. I just love it. Don’t you?

It’s pure cinema. When you get a truly great action movie, whether it’s an action thriller, like Die Hard, or pure action, like The Raid – that’s cinema to me. 

Yeah, yeah.

Going back to Elevation, it feels like a small slice of a much bigger world. Could you see this, you know, being expanded in further films? I could even imagine this being a videogame, actually.

Yeah, I think so too. And we definitely have talked about that. Listen, that’s up to the audience. I never go into a movie expecting that we would have a second one or a third one. I hope that it happens. I hope people have a hunger for that, but the story certainly lends itself to that. With Elevation, for sure.

I can’t wait to see Anaconda. You say it’s a comedy, but is it also a horror, still? 

There’s definitely horror elements. I mean, that’s why we’re here. Sony put us on the movie because they want the horror to work. The director here, Tom [Gormican], who’s known for being a comedy director. We’re merging both. And it’s a little scary to do that, because people have certainly done horror comedy, but not the way that we’re doing it here.

Brad Fuller, thank you very much.

Elevation will stream on Amazon Prime Video from the 8th February in the UK.

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