B.J. NOVAK’S REVENGE

Novak directs and stars in Vengeance (in theaters July 27) as an aspiring podcaster in search of a story when a woman he’d been seeing in New York turns up dead in a West Texas oil field. Sensing a truecrime tale that could make his career, he’s drawn into a fullscale mystery—and a plot for revenge. “That premise has been in movies since the beginning; it’s a very male-gaze, classic movie trope,” says Novak, 42, who starred in TV’s

The Office and the movies

Inglourious Basterds, Saving Mr. Banks and The Founder. “But it’s also extremely social-media age, this sense of loss and the digital ghost of someone.”