Bill Hader’s feature directing debut, the horror film They Know, has reached the stage where a sale could follow fast. Production wrapped in May, the movie is now in sound mixing, and it will soon be screened for potential distributors.
That is the point at which a film stops being only a project and starts becoming a release prospect. Hader directs and stars in the movie with Linda Cardellini, and the story centers on a divorced dad who becomes convinced his ex-wife is dating a mysterious man whose influence begins to spread through their children.
Hader said the idea grew out of conversations with Duffy Boudreau about being divorced but on good terms with former partners. He said they talked through worst-case versions of that situation, wrote multiple drafts and kept pushing the script even after a producer dismissed it as too mean-spirited, horrible and cynical. He later said Ari Aster’s Eddington and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud helped him finish the script.
The film is also arriving with some early private momentum. Hader said he has already shown a cut of They Know at friends and family screenings, including one attended by Zach Cregger, and he said he also got encouragement from Alfonso Cuarón. Before production, he had a chance to speak with Steven Spielberg, a reminder that the movie is being watched closely by people far beyond the set.
Hader has already shown he can work in dark material with a sharp comic edge through Barry, and They Know now appears to be moving into the most consequential stretch of its life. The next question is not whether the film exists, but which distributor, if any, decides it wants it after seeing the cut.
