The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sits down with director Christopher Landon and star Meghann Fahy for Blumhouse’s upcoming horror
Drop
at NYCC 2024.

Drop
follows a mother receiving sinister AirDrops with instructions to save her children.
During their conversation, Landon discusses the PG-13 rating battle, they talk about the unexpected script for the movie, and Fahy discusses her surreal experience working with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock in
Sirens
.

Blumhouse has been rocking the horror game for as long as audiences can remember, with writer-director Christopher Landon standing out from the filmmaking crowd. Having built a legacy thanks to the notorious Paranormal Activity franchise and more recent hits like Happy Death Day and Freaky, Landon is gearing up for his latest release, Drop.

In Drop, what starts out as a simple date for widowed mother Violet (Meghann Fahy) goes sideways when she starts receiving a bunch of AirDrops from an unknown sender, only to realize that these drops are a series of instructions that she must follow. Failure to do so will get her children killed.

Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down with director Landon and star Fahy at New York Comic Con 2024, where they discuss their experiences at the con, its PG-13 rating, and Fahy’s upcoming project, Sirens, with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock. Check out our interview with the cast and crew in the player above, or read the full conversation below.

“You Can Feel the Energy of Movie Lovers”
Image via Netflix

COLLIDER: You just came from your panel, and you shared the trailer. What is it like world-premiering a trailer at a Comic Con like this?

CHRIS LANDON: It’s a lot cooler than watching it at home alone, reading comments.

MEGHANN FAHY: I would say it’s pretty surreal. It’s my first time doing any of those things and so to be doing all of them in a place like this is really, really special.

LANDON: It’s also because you can feel the energy of movie lovers. That is something that you can’t replace. It’s the best energy you can find, so I think it’s pretty cool.

People here give an F about movies.

FAHY: It’s such a nice energy to be around.

100%. So, we are at Comic Con, and I am curious: if you were to walk around on the convention floor, which you might be doing, what would you buy? Is there anything that you collect?

FAHY: I have to be honest and say I don’t collect anything. I recently was thinking about it because I feel like I should find something to collect to then pass down to someone or something. Do you collect stuff?

I used to collect a lot and I have really worked on myself to stop collecting.

FAHY: I see.

LANDON: I used to collect bad relationships. That was my superpower. No, truth be told, if I go down there, which I might, I’d really like to just get stuff for my kids because I’m trying to shape their minds and their tastes. I keep asking my husband, for example, every year, “Can they see The Exorcist now?” And he’s like, “They are four. No.” [Laughs] So, there are things we’re working on. But they’ve seen Gremlins and Beetlejuice, so they would lose their minds here.

‘Drop’ Follows An Airdrop Prank Gone Horribly Wrong
Image via HBO

Eventually, you’ll take them to San Diego Comic-Con. But jumping into the movie — everyone watching this won’t have seen the trailer yet, so how have you been describing the film to like friends and family?

LANDON: Drop is about a single mom who goes on a date. It’s her first date in a while, and she goes to this fancy highrise around Chicago and she starts getting AirDrops from someone in the room. They’re kind of sort of funny, weird memes, but they start to turn a bit sinister, and then she finally gets one that says, “Check your security cameras.” She realizes that her son and her sister are being held hostage by an armed and dangerous man in her house, and she has to do some bad shit to get them out.

This is why I don’t have AirDrop on on my phone. This is the reason.

LANDON: You’re smart.

FAHY: Contacts only, or just completely off?

It’s just off until I turn it on when someone wants to send me something.

FAHY: That’s smart.

What’s it like reading a script for the first time? Were you told about the story? How much do you get told before actually reading the script?

FAHY: Usually not very much. In this case, everyone had read it and loved it, so they were very excited to pass it along to me. My experience was just, truly, I sat down and could not stop reading it until it was finished because I had to know what was gonna happen. I didn’t figure it out on my own, which is something that anybody would probably try to do. It’s like when you watch a murder mystery show and you’re trying to put together the pieces. I was doing that with the script and I just couldn’t do it. That was a pretty special experience because that does not happen all that often.

I’m a huge fan of not knowing the answer when you can actually get to the end and not know.

FAHY: Yeah, that’s so refreshing, right? To not be able to be ahead of the film

Where are you in the editing process right now?

LANDON: I am done.

With a movie like this, it’s all about when you give the audience information or not. What was it like screening the movie for friends and family? What did you learn from those early screenings?

LANDON: It’s funny because in the past, I’ve had to make adjustments, or you have to sort of fine-tune or figure new things out. In some cases, there are reshoots or whatever. This was a very tightly-wound machine — it’s very tightly constructed. There was not a lot to learn, which was kind of weird. It was like a career first for me where I came out of that first screening with very tiny bits of, like, “Maybe you could tighten it up here and there.” But otherwise, it’s the same movie and there were no reshoots. It was pretty fast.

Congrats because that does not happen.

LANDON: Thanks, it will probably never happen again.

Also, that probably is a sign that the script is really good. So, you see the shooting schedule; what day did you have circled in terms of, “I cannot wait to film this,” and what day was like, “How the F are we gonna film this?”

FAHY: I knew the whole shoot was gonna be really intense, just because there are very few moments in the film where you don’t see Violet. I think I had one day off, and it was in the first week. It was one of the first few days of shooting, and I was like, “Well, there we go.” Every day was a different kind of challenge. I will say that there were some stunts in the film, and it was my first time doing that kind of thing. I was really excited about that. But that was hard, too, in a new way. That’s what I loved about the film though, is that every day showing up, there was a new challenge to dive into — something new to learn, something new to feel. The stakes being as high as they were the whole time is also something that is a challenging component of it. But I do feel ultimately really lucky that every single day, there was something cool and new that we were gonna do.

‘Drop’ Went from Rated R to PG-13
Image via Universal Pictures

Is it PG-13 or R?

LANDON: It’s PG-13.

Were you able to get away with certain things with that rating, or did you have any sort of battle with the MPAA?

LANDON: Yes, there was a battle. The movie was rated R on our first pass, but the nice thing was we knew we were on the edge of it. We got the R rating because the movie is very intense, and it took some massaging and some conversations to get us down to the PG-13 where we all knew we should be, because it is that kind of a movie. There’s nothing in this movie that screams R, but there’s a real intensity to it.

Also, sometimes shaving off, like, six frames can get you a better rating.

LANDON: That’s basically what we did.

[Laughs] Was it six frames or more like 12?

LANDON: There were a couple of those in there that we had to shave some stuff off of or reduce the amount of blood that was in the shot.

I can imagine, as a filmmaker, it’s a little bit like, “Oh my God, I love this shot, and I want this blood. But I also want this to be seen by more people.”

LANDON: I didn’t even feel that way because I didn’t have to make any kind of creative sacrifice to get down to that rating. That’s how razor’s edge we were. In the end, I felt very okay about that. It wasn’t like I had set out to make some gruesome R-rated movie. It wasn’t like Freaky, where it’s like if they came and said make it PG-13, that would have sucked. This was okay.

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Working With Julianne Moore On ‘Sirens’ Was “Pretty Surreal”
Image via Sony

You shot or wrapped on Sirens with Julianne Moore. What the hell was that like?

FAHY: It was pretty surreal. I’ve loved her for a very long time. I got to work with some really incredible people, too — Bill Camp, who I think is just an American treasure. I love that man. It was a very cool experience, for sure. Tonally, it was really interesting, too, because it’s sort of darkly comedic with elements of, I wouldn’t say fantasy, but kind of surrealism. All three of those things mixed together made for a really, really fun shoot.

Can you say who you play? Or what it’s about real quick?

FAHY: My character’s name is Devin. I play the older sister of Milly Alcock, who is a live-in assistant of Julianne Moore’s character, and she’s this sort of like ethereal, rich lady — more of that for me. I basically roll up to try to convince my sister to come home to Buffalo with me, and she’s not having that. The show kind of takes off from there.

Drop is set for a theatrical release in the United States on April 11, 2025.

Drop Director Christopher Landon Cast Brandon Sklenar , Violett Beane , Meghann Fahy , Ed Weeks , Fiona Browne , Jeffery Self , Gabrielle Ryan Runtime 0 Minutes Writers Jillian Jacobs , Christopher Roach Studio(s) Blumhouse Productions , Platinum Dunes