Spiderhead may fall under the “sci-fi movies” category on Netflix, but the filmmakers insist that everything you see in the film is either in the not-so-distant future or could actually be happening today.
The movie gets its title from its primary location, a state-of-the-art penitentiary run by Chris Hemsworth’s Steve Abnesti. Inmates at Spiderhead have the luxury of roaming the halls freely, indulging in tasty food and other amenities, but in exchange, they must agree to participate in Abnesti’s experiments. They must wear surgically attached devices that administer the mind-alerting drugs he’s testing, drugs with the ability to make the inmates “better” versions of themselves.
With Spiderhead about to drop on Netflix, I got the chance to chat with director Joseph Kosinski and producer Eric Newman about their experience working with the material. While the film does have a futuristic feel to it with the minimalist facility and technology used to administer the drugs, both insist that the events of Spiderhead are closer to reality than you might think.
Kosinski insisted, “I don’t think it’s science fiction. I think everything in this film could be happening today.” Newman added, “And likely will happen at some point soon,” Newman also drew a connection between Spiderhead and the real-world drug manipulation committed by the Sackler family:
“I don’t think there’s anything in this film that isn’t in the not-so-distant future for us. Speaking for myself, I’m doing a show about the Sacklers right now and OxyContin and the process by which they arrived at OxyContin, and nothing at this point would shock me.”
Kosinski takes that highly disturbing scenario and brings it to screen with an extremely unique genre-bending style and tone, something he heavily credits to screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick:
“I think the script so represents what makes them so special and unique. Being able to capture George [Saunders]'s tone from his short story and expand it and do a feature film. If you had read that short story I don’t think there’s any way you would ever think it could be worthy of a film, and they wrote this thing that I didn’t put down. I read it cover to cover when I first got it, which is a great sign. And it was just, to me, an incredible challenge as a director and I thought it would be a really fun challenge for the right actors to tackle and just make something totally unique and different than anything else out there.”
Kosinski found the right actors in his long-time collaborator Miles Teller who plays Abnesti’s favorite inmate, Jeff, and Hemsworth himself who proves especially vital to Spiderhead’s tonal variations.
“This is my third film with Miles so I just think he’s got an incredible range, he’s so talented, so I knew he was gonna bring that. But I think Chris, what he did every day on set to play this character, it’s totally different than anything we’ve seen him do before. To do it in an American accent, to be so charming and funny and entertaining, but also have the starkness and just the complexity of this almost sociopathic character to me was such a fun thing to see on set every single day and I’m really, really excited for people to see it.”
Looking for more on the making of Spiderhead? Be sure to check out my full conversation with Kosinski and Newman in the video at the top of this article!