Taking over Tinseltown
Even before his first feature film is released, Kiwi James Ashcroft has been signed up to direct two major Hollywood movies
James Ashcroft couldn’t believe it.
A week after he finished his first feature film, Coming Home in the Dark, Covid hit and the world locked down. All those plans, all those film festivals, all those premiere parties, all went out the window.
But Ashcroft sat tight, confident Coming Home in the Dark, based on a terrifying Owen Marshall short story, was really good, and would survive a delayed release. He wasn’t wrong.
In January this year, when it finally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it caught the eye of industry movers and shakers and moviemakers.
The stylish thriller shot ‘‘at breakneck speed, in the middle of winter, for very, very little money’’, recalls Ashcroft, isn’t due to hit theatres until August, but despite that, the New Zealand actor, writer and director has been headhunted by Hollywood.
In late-April, Ashcroft, (Nga¯ ti Kahu and Nga¯ puhi) got an email from his agent in America, saying executives from Legendary Entertainment wanted to meet him.
The major studio has produced a slew of blockbusters including The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, Jurassic World, Straight Outta Compton, Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, BlacKkKlansman and Godzilla vs. Kong.
Ashcroft has produced a handful of short films and Coming Home in the Dark, which was filmed over 20 days and cost $1.4 million.
But when they met online, Legendary’s executive vicepresident, Alex Garcia, started mentioning big projects including turning Max Brooks’ hit 2020 novel, Devolution, into a movie.
‘‘And I was able to, quite conveniently, reach across to my bookshelf, still in Zoom shot,’’ remembers Ashcroft, ‘‘and pull a copy of Devolution out and say, ‘I know this book very well’.’’
Brooks, the son of Hollywood stars Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, is also author of World War Z, which was turned into a 2013 movie starring Brad Pitt.
While that dealt with zombies,
Devolution tells the story of a remote eco-village in Washington state besieged by Sasquatches after an eruption of Mt Rainier.
Ashcroft loved Brooks’ writing, especially World War Z, and when he heard about Devolution, he preordered a copy on Amazon.
‘‘It’s a really compelling, fascinating and surprising take on the folklore and mythology [of Bigfoot]. He’s got a very idiosyncratic style, and it’s filled with tension and suspense – and it’s actually very, very scary.’’
And so when Ashcroft got to talk with Legendary’s top bosses, he says they were taken by the clear idea he had for the material, and how it could become a film – a mix of elements of The Poseidon Adventure, Jurassic Park, and Straw Dogs.
But above all, Ashcroft believes the studio could see his passion for the book, and understood he would faithfully adapt it.
Before long, Legendary had invited Ashcroft and his writing partner, Eli Kent, to adapt the book for screen, and Ashcroft to direct the movie. ‘‘And yeah, I did – I had to pinch myself when that offer came through.’’
Ashcroft, 43, hasn’t walked a normal path to Hollywood.
He grew up around Wellington, studied at Toi Whakaari, New Zealand Drama School, and moved into acting and theatre directing, spending seven years as chief executive and artistic director of Ma¯ori theatre company Taki Rua.
Catherine Fitzgerald, who helped produce Coming
Home in the Dark, says giving Ashcroft the money to make a feature film was a leap of faith given his limited background in cinema.
But she says he’s an extraordinary talent, that what he produced with Coming Home in the Dark is remarkable. ‘‘Absolutely – that’s why I got involved.’’
Another producer on Coming Home in the Dark, Mike Minogue, said the way Ashcroft performed on set belied the fact he’d never made a full-length movie before.
‘‘When things have to be changed, even at the last minute, he’s a flat-line. Totally calm, not attached to it at all, just, ‘OK, if we can’t have that, how do we do it?’’’
Minogue, best known for his roles in Wellington Paranormal, What We Do in the Shadows and The Watercooler, predicts Ashcroft will become a household name.
That’s likely, as Ashcroft forges a career in the States, working on movies with budgets that dwarf
what’s available in New Zealand.
He’s also been signed to direct another Hollywood movie, an adaptation of a well-known crime thriller. The project has yet to be officially announced, but will begin filming in America in January.
‘‘I’m definitely still reeling a bit from how life has changed, and I don’t think I’ll get a reprieve from that till I find myself on the set, on day one,’’ says Ashcroft.
‘‘But it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve always been aiming for, so it’s incredibly gratifying to actually now start to get some tangible momentum.’’
However, Ashcroft swears he won’t be lost to New Zealand.
He already has the script for the adaptation of another Owen Marshall story, The Rule of Jenny Pen, being shopped around the world, including at an elite forum at Cannes in a fortnight.
And he doesn’t want to uproot his family – wife Debbie and three young daughters – from their home in Mt Maunganui, to live in America. To that end, Ashcroft says there might even be scope for New Zealand involvement in Devolution.
‘‘I will cheekily try and convince them to film in New Zealand, because we’ve got some wonderful locations that I feel aren’t too much of a stone’s throw from the Washington forests the novel’s set in.
‘‘We’ve got everything that’s required for this one, here in New Zealand – and we haven’t got Covid.’’
Ashcroft stresses directing big overseas projects is a way he can keep adapting more intimate works from New Zealand authors, into movies.
‘‘A lot of the stories I want to tell, come from this land, and they’re about this land and our people. But also, they’re stories I believe can stand up next to Hollywood blockbusters. ‘‘There’s as much worth and vitality and thrills and scares and comedy in homegrown stories from our backyard as there are in any story. So I’m committed to that.
‘‘But I’m also looking forward to being in a forest filming Bigfoot.’’