What did you get done last year in lockdown? A couple of puzzles? Some nice sourdough loaves? If you’re Rob Savage, you shot one of the best horror films of the year over Zoom with your best friends. Host ended up being the ultimate Covid-19 movie, and it put Savage and his collaborators firmly on the map – heat that he’s using to jump straight into making more movies.
Right now, the British filmmaker is out in Los Angeles juggling a handful of titles in pre-production, he tells Empire in the British New Wave issue. “There’s a couple of things. I’ve got a Sam Raimi project, and a thing for Fox and 21 Laps that I’m working on as well,” Savage says. “Hopefully one of them’s going to shoot tail-end of this year.”
And if that wasn’t enough, he’s already shot his first post-Host movie for spook-studio Blumhouse, working with the same creative team who cooked up serious scares with him in lockdown. “It was a very low-budget project we wanted to do pre-Host that suddenly we could just go and do," he says. "We were allowed to do what we wanted, and that’s amazing.” The whole experience of making that breakout hit was “clarifying,” he explains. “I was having a real crisis about where to place myself, and Host was such a pure experience. This is how it should be; this is the feeling that had been lost after ten years of being a jobbing director. Now I’m just thinking project to project. This next movie might end my career and I might go back to making movies on Zoom with my friends, and that would be fine.”
This month’s issue of Empire is a massive celebration of The British New Wave, showcasing 26 incredible directors, writers and actors driving cinema into a new era. On the cover, you’ll find Bukky Bakray, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emerald Fennell and Riz Ahmed – and the issue also features major new interviews and exclusive new photo shoots with stars such as Henry Golding, Weruche Opia, Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, Olly Alexander, Jessica Yu Li Henwick Morfydd Clark, and Olivia Cooke, and writers and directors including Savage, alongside Prano Bailey-Bond, Kate Herron, Remi Weekes, Francis Lee, and Krysty Wilson-Cairns.
Find a copy on newsstands from Thursday 10 June, or pre-order the new issue online here.