Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff talks with Drop’s Christopher Landon, Meghann Fahy, and Brandon Sklenar at SXSW 2025.

Writer-director Landon discusses creating a modern Hitchcock film, a departure from his usual work.

The trio also talk about their dedication to crafting a fully immersive restaurant set and other ways they added layers of authenticity to the film.

After her breakout role in The White Lotus, Meghann Fahy is ready to experiment with other genres. Although her supporting performance in Your Monster gave her a taste of what making a horror film could look like, she hadn’t ventured into nail-bitting territory until now. In Drop, Christopher Landon’s latest directorial effort produced by Blumhouse, the actress stars as a single mom who heads on a date for the first time in ages with a guy (played by Brandon Sklenar) she met online. While they savor a gourmet meal, the protagonist is bombarded with threatening phone drops, making her wonder if the man sitting across from her is behind the harassment.
The stars and director of the upcoming horror thriller stopped by the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center at SXSW 2025 for a sit-down conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff. During this interview, Landon details why this project was a welcome departure from the popular slashers he helmed previously, like Freaky and Happy Death Day. He also shares why he believed Fahy and Sklenar were the ideal duo to bring the main pair to screen, discusses the behind-the-scenes process of building a high-end restaurant, and talks about what it was like to work alongside enthusiastic background actors who were committed to their craft.
Fahy also discusses why she felt both exhausted and creatively fulfilled on set, and Sklenar admits to indulging in tasty steaks, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. Sklenar also teases his next highly anticipated film, The Housemaid, which stars Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. You can watch the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
Christopher Landon Wanted to Make ‘Drop’ Because It Felt Like a Modern Hitchcock Film

Landon’s husband calls this his “grown-up movie.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: I’m so excited to talk about Drop. Chris, I’ll follow you to any project you take, and yet again you deliver big. Congratulations on the movie.
CHRISTOPHER LANDON: Thank you so much.
So, this opportunity comes your way. What is something about the material that makes you say to yourself, “I have something to gain from this as a director who’s always evolving my craft?”
LANDON: I loved the idea and the potential of making a movie that felt like a modern Hitchcock movie, but also, like a classic ’90s thriller. I feel like there’s not enough of them anymore, you know, so for me, it was just a really cool opportunity. I really loved the script. I loved her character’s journey. I was jonesing for something that was a little bit darker. My husband jokingly calls this my “grown-up movie.”
MEGHANN FAHY: That’s funny!
LANDON: It’s true. He does. [Laughs] I love the idea of making a fairly straightforward thriller but with some interesting little flourishes.
I’m going to make this really awkward for the two of you and ask you, Chris, about casting them. You need phenomenal actors who can play these characters very well, but when you cast these roles, you also need actors who understand the technical requirements for filming a movie like this. What did you see in the two of them that suggested to you, they could tick both boxes?
LANDON: I just saw two really important factors. I saw an incredible range and honesty in their work. There’s such presence in what they do. This is really creepy sounding, but I remember I made a mood board thing where I had your photos next to each other.
FAHY: That’s not creepy. That’s really cute!
LANDON: But I would look at them and say, “That’s the date that I wanna go watch. I wanna see those two people fall in love,” and so that’s what we went for.
‘Drop’ Was a Challenging Introduction to the Horror Genre

Fahy and Sklenar discuss the art of subtlety in the movie.

Image by Photagonist

Meghann and Brandon, when this opportunity comes your way, what single part about making this movie were you most excited to get to do, and then, ultimately, can you tell me something about filming it that was more creatively fulfilling than you ever could have imagined at the start?
FAHY: To answer the first part of the question, sort of everything, to be annoying and just say that, because it was my first time doing anything in that genre. But more specifically, the stunts and stuff. I was really excited about that because I also had never done that.
[And] I guess the whole experience. Again, I don’t mean to be generalizing it here, but I really had no idea what to expect before I started the film and, at the end of it, I felt exhausted but really, really creatively fulfilled. I think that’s kind of the best version of both of those things.
SKLENAR: I was a fan of Chris’ work and Meghann’s work, and I love horror movies and thrillers. I first read the script, and I breezed through it, and I didn’t see the twist coming. I was like, “This is a classic, fun movie that I would wanna go see, and it’s aware of itself.” Also, creatively, it was interesting just being confined to these seats for the entire movie. I spent the entire movie in a chair, having a conversation about calamari and wine. And trying to find something in that, where you can have as much humanity and make it as real and as grounded as possible, and sort of come in and have this guy have a life outside this place and a perspective, and root that in values and ethos that can somehow come through a very casual first date conversation, and finding moments to maybe mislead the audience or be aware of yourself doing that with a look or the way you say something. So, yeah, it was a tightrope creatively. In terms of acting with her, it was like doing a play, but in very small chunks every day.

Image via Universal Pictures

Because you brought up the tightrope – you need to play your character’s truth, but you also need to keep us on our toes while watching, because we can’t trust anyone who is around Violet. What was it like, without spoiling anything, playing with that divide and not tipping the scale too far one way or the other?
SKLENAR: I mean, it was kind of just in the moment, picking those moments when you know, “This is a good opportunity to maybe throw a look or say something a certain way. Hold a look a little bit longer than you should.” You know what I mean? These really subtle little things, whereas the audience is like, “That seems a bit odd.” Just finding those in the moment and sort of rolling with it.
Kept me on my toes, and I liked it.
You just brought up that you love horror movies. When I hear that, I can’t help but ask, what’s your favorite scary movie?
SKLENAR: Oh, that’s tough to say. Of all time, it’s impossible to say. Strange Darling wasn’t really scary, but I loved that movie so much. I’ve been talking about it nonstop. That movie is brilliant. And I loved Longlegs.

Related

‘Strange Darling’ Trailer Crowns Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald as Scream King & Queen

The horror thriller hits theaters later this month.

It’s funny you say you haven’t done anything in the genre, because I was thinking about Your Monster. That’s in a million genres!
FAHY: It’s in a million genres, and I didn’t really do anything too spooky in it. But yes, true.
Top-tier genre movie right there.
FAHY: Oh my god, I love that movie.
Landon Created a Fully Functioning Restaurant for ‘Drop’

It had a fully trained staff and its own menu!

Image via Universal Pictures

I want to talk a little bit about some of the production design, because I was reading in our press notes that you created a fully functioning restaurant. What are some little touches that people might not realize function to the extent of a real, operational restaurant, and why did you want to go to those lengths to give them a full setting to work in?
LANDON: We wanted this restaurant to be as immersive as possible. We wanted that for the actors. And obviously, it’s a character in the movie, and so there’s a lot of specificity. I mean, every tiny detail was present in that restaurant. We had a trained wait staff. We had real food. We had fake food that looked like our real food. We created our own menu. We had a chef who actually created the menu for the restaurant.
I think one of the most complicated aspects of the film, and this is definitely a huge kudos to the AD department, is that we also had to figure out a timeline for every single thing that happened around them. Like, who was just sitting down? Who was about to get up? What course were they on? All of those things had to be mapped out and figured out so that everything was, at least from a continuity standpoint, seamless. There was an enormous amount of work that went into bringing this whole space and this restaurant to life.

Image by Photagonist

Meghann and Brandon, is there any particular little detail that you really appreciated? Perhaps something that’s not front and center for the viewer, but it made this world feel real and full to you?
FAHY: I know what you want to say. You are ready.
SKLENAR: The steak?
FAHY: [Laughs] Yeah!
SKLENAR: I ate a lot of steaks in this movie. That’s not what I was gonna say, but damn, that guy could cook a mean steak. I did actually eat all the food in these scenes.
LANDON: He would eat when we weren’t rolling.
SKLENAR: I just kept eating the steaks.
I don’t blame you. It looked like a good steak.
SKLENAR: Yeah, they were great. I miss them. I miss them dearly. The archway entrance hallway of that restaurant, when you come out of the elevators and then walk through, was gorgeous. I was blown away by how they did it. I mean, it’s wood, and they cut it all. I used to build stuff like that, and it’s very difficult. I was blown away by the craftsmanship of that restaurant. It was unreal. And the ceiling was paper that they had sort of rolled, sheet by sheet, and each sheet was clipped to the ceiling with two little clips.
FAHY: So it was all hanging at different heights.
SKLENAR: Hundreds of them.
FAHY: It was really intricate.
SKLENAR: So tedious and thoughtful.
The detail pays off big time.
SKLENAR: Absolutely.

Image by Photagonist

FAHY: Just the lighting. I feel like the lighting was so spectacular. You call it practical lighting, right? We felt like we were just in the restaurant the whole time, apart from obviously there were cameras. But lights like this we didn’t really have around us, so it just made the whole thing even more immersive.
LANDON: Our DP, Marc Spicer, created this environment, which, as a director, was a dream come true because there was so much mobility and flexibility in the way that we shot it. I wasn’t chained to one specific area, and then we had to move a bunch of lights around. It was so malleable and flexible at all times, and we had absolute control over everything, which is also why it lent itself for us to do really cool and specific lighting cues that were about telling the story through her point of view.
So we’ve hit production design and you mentioned your cinematographer. I also wanted to make sure to mention your costume designer, Gwen [Jeffares]. One thing that caught my eye when I was reading our production notes was that Gwen and her team created backstories for all of the background actors in the restaurant, and I love details like that. I was wondering if you remembered any and if you could share one.
LANDON: Funny enough, they didn’t share all of those with us, but you could feel it at every single table. You really felt like there were the three women who were in the back who are old friends and having that monthly catch-up dinner. There was this awesome queer couple that was sitting near them not too far, and he had a choker, which was something I asked for. But also, apart from them designing all those people, what was so cool about this movie, too, is that all those background actors brought so much to the restaurant every single day. They came every single day, and they were very much in character.
One of the funny things was that they had to spend so much time together, and these are complete strangers who get sat at a table, and then you’re like, “Hey, you’re gonna spend 24 days together,” or whatever it was, at a table alone. It was interesting to see how some of them made these amazing friendships, where, when we wrapped, we had one table come up to us and all the women were crying, and they said it was the best time they’d ever had. It was almost like summer camp for them. And then there were some people who hated each other. [Laughs]
FAHY: Yeah, it was like a whole little world happening.

Image by Photagonist

LANDON: There was this whole thing going on in the back.
FAHY: Somebody quit.
LANDON: Well, somebody got fired.
SKLENAR: I was a background performer for years back in the day.
It’s not easy work, and it’s often thankless.
SKLENAR: It’s thankless and the lowest rung on the totem pole.
LANDON: These were joyful people. On our last day with all of our background [actors], because eventually we moved into some pretty heavy stunt stuff, and everybody was done with that part of it, I was on set, and I heard music playing, and then I looked over, and it looked like some people were dancing. I was like, “Oh, everyone’s just trying to get pumped up to get excited.” Then I looked and realized that the entire background cast had learned a dance routine. They were literally doing a flash mob on set. It was so fun. It was so cool. I had tears in my eyes because they cared so much.
SKLENAR: Yeah, they were great.

10:10

Related

Blumhouse’s New Tech Horror Film ‘Drop’ Will Keep You Guessing Until the Very End

Christopher Landon and Meghann Fahy discuss the MPAA battle, the twisted script, and Fahy’s ‘Sirens’ with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock.

The ‘1923’ Alum Teases ‘The Housemaid,’ Led by Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried

“It’s dark, it’s sexy, and it’s suspenseful.”

Image by Photagonist

I have to let you go. It would be sadder, but Meghann, we’re gonna do a Ladies Night interview where we can dig into more of the details.
Before I let you go though, Brandon, I have one question about an upcoming project for you. You have some cool stuff, but the one that I zeroed in on, because Paul Feig is here at the festival, is The Housemaid. I haven’t read the book, but I started to read about it, and people are just so into that material. You’re working with Sydney [Sweeney] and Amanda [Seyfried] on that, and they’re leads, but they’re also producers on it. What was it like working with them and seeing them not only crush their roles but also be leaders in that kind of environment?
SKLENAR: We wrapped on that, like, two weeks ago. I’m really excited about it. It was a wild, wild experience. Sydney’s a powerhouse. That girl is so incredibly smart and knows exactly what she’s doing, and is a great producer, and she’s on it, and Amanda, as well. Amanda’s been at this for a long time, she’s a veteran, and she’s just such a magnificent actor. I’m just excited for people to see it. She gets to go to places that I haven’t seen her do much, and she absolutely crushed it.
I’ll squeeze in one more question just to wrap my brain around what the movie’s going to be a little more because, again, I haven’t read the source material, but I was reading a little bit about it, and when I think about Paul Feig, I think about a movie having some sort of comedic touch, which doesn’t seem like what that source material is. Can you categorize it for us?
SKLENAR: It’s definitely a huge departure for Paul. It’s dark, and it’s sexy, and it’s suspenseful, psychological. We did kind of bring some humor to it at times just to add some levity. I haven’t seen it—obviously, we just wrapped it—but I feel like the tone is going to be pretty specific and unique. It’s going to be great.
Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.
Drop arrives in theaters nationwide on April 11.

Drop

Release Date

April 11, 2025

Runtime

85 Minutes

Director

Christopher Landon

Writers

Jillian Jacobs, Christopher Roach

Get Tickets