‘Cold Storage’ Interview: Screenwriter David Koepp

The film stars Joe Keery (‘Stranger Things‘), Georgina Campbell (‘Barbarian‘), Sosie Bacon (‘Smile‘), Vanessa Redgrave (‘Mission: Impossible’), Lesley Manville (‘Phantom Thread’), and Liam Neeson (‘The Naked Gun‘).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with legendary screenwriter David Koepp about his work on ‘Cold Storage’, the challenges of adapting his own novel, what he had to cut, his writing process, casting, and working with director Jonny Campbell, as well as reuniting with his longtime collaborator director Steven Spielberg on the upcoming ‘Disclosure Day’, and his memories of working with the lateRobert Duvall on ‘The Paper’.

Related Article: Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell Talk New Horror Comedy ‘Cold Storage’

‘Cold Storage’ screenwriter David Koepp.

Moviefone: To begin with, as a screenwriter, you have adapted other author’s books to the big screen before. But what are the challenges of adapting your own book into a screenplay?

David Koepp: Well, it’s a little harder and it’s a little easier. It’s easier because I had 30 years of screenwriting instincts in the back of my head when I was writing the novel. So, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was kind of sketching out the movie in my head as I wrote the book. But then it’s harder in that you must cut a lot of stuff. They’re very different mediums. Books are 350 pages long, movies are 120, double spaced. The rules of what you can do in each one is very different. But one thing’s for sure, a whole bunch of stuff must go when you make the movie. It’s one thing when you’re cutting someone else’s favorite parts. Who cares? Just get rid of it. But this time it was me cutting my favorite stuff because it just doesn’t work in a movie or there isn’t room for it or it’s wrong for the pacing or whatever. I found that a little bit harder than I had in the past.

Joe Keery in ‘Cold Storage’. Photo: StudioCanal.

MF: Was there anything you had to cut from the book that was particularly heartbreaking for you?

DK: Probably the authorial voice, the person who’s telling the book, it’s not a character, but just the tone in which the book is told. The author is allowed to have a pretty heavy hand and he’s being a bit of a wise ass. I’m trying to be funny. I’m having a very good time with it. I made myself laugh. There’s no one to carry that in the film. A character can’t talk like that. You’re not going to have endless voiceover. So that must go. Since a lot of the book’s humor came from that, I felt like I really lost something there. It takes a few drafts then for the script to evolve, and that tone, maybe mischievous or playful that you wanted, now can be inhabited by some of the characters or in the storytelling itself, where you cut, when and how. So, that that took a few drafts.

Georgina Campbell in ‘Cold Storage’. Photo: StudioCanal.

MF: Both the book and the film introduce the concept of a rat king, which is a real phenomenon in nature. When you learn about new concepts like that that interest you, do you file them away somewhere and say, “Oh, this would be an interesting idea to incorporate into a story some day?”

DK: Yeah, I have a very large story ideas file on my Mac. I use Mac Mail. So, I send myself a lot of emails or I’ll run across an article and I’m like, “Oh, that’s creepy. That’s got to go somewhere.” So, I just park it all there and review it from time to time. When something crystallizes into an idea, and this is really plumbers talking about their wrenches at this point, but I start moving old emails with fragments of stories into a new file, which bears the name of the whatever the project is. It becomes a dumping ground for stuff that I think might work. The great thing about researching on the internet as opposed to researching with a chatbot, is the chatbot will give you very specific answers about what you asked. When you have a broader Google search, weird things come up that you wouldn’t have thought were related. Then you might click a link in that, and you go somewhere else that you didn’t think of. I think that’s probably the way I came across a rat king. I knew I wanted rats. I was researching, “What are the grossest rats in the world?” I came across the story of a rat king and then I found out more about it. So, it’s following those weird little roads, but having somewhere to put all those ideas in the meantime, which is important. So, you figure out where they go.

(L to R) Joe Keery, Liam Neeson and Georgina Campbell in ‘Cold Storage’. Photo: StudioCanal.

MF: Can you talk about putting together the cast and did their final performances match your imagination when you were creating the characters?

DK: Yeah. Because I was a producer, I was involved in casting. When the performers come in, there’s a natural tendency to rewrite a little bit to suit them. Obviously, they come in and they should be playing the role that’s written because that’s what they’re there to do. But they also have their own personalities, and they bring certain things, and you want to accentuate some things that they do well and maybe move away from things that aren’t natural for them. I remember in rehearsal; I wrote a whole new scene for Joe and Georgina because they had such a nice rapport. So, I wrote a new three or four page scene that I think helped them understand and get to know each other better. Only a few lines of it ended up in the film. I knew that it wasn’t ever going to be in the film because it didn’t fit in that part of the movie. But it very much fit in terms of helping them understand who they were. I think they have a great chemistry and that’s because they understood who they were very well.

Liam Neeson in ‘Cold Storage’. Photo: StudioCanal.

MF: Can you talk about working with Jonny Campbell and why was he the right person to direct this movie?

DK:Gavin Polone, my producing partner, and I, saw his series, ‘Dracula’ that he did for Netflix, which we really liked very much and thought, it looked great, it was funny, and it was funny within the context of a vampire movie, which is not so easy to do without being silly. Then we just had a great meeting and really saw things the same way. I knew I didn’t want to direct it because I’d spent so much time writing the book and so much time writing the script. I was like, “I can’t. I’m just going to want to record it the way it is. I need someone who can interpret it.” So, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Emily Blunt in ‘Disclosure Day’, directed by Steven Spielberg. Photo: Universal Pictures.

MF: Speaking of directors, you’re re-teaming with Steven Spielberg for this summer’s ‘Disclosure Day’. What was it like working with him again?

DK: Well, it’s always fun. This is our 5th movie that he’s directed. Probably the 10th or 12th overall, including things he’s produced that I’ve written. It’s great because he hasn’t really changed in 30 years. His favorite part is making it up, and he’s the original, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if guy?” The answer usually is, yes, it would. It would be very cool. Let’s try and figure that out. I will say on this one, I found him more the most intense that I’ve dealt with him. I think he felt a lot of pressure because he knew, “Hey, I’ve done movies with UFOs in them before, three times. If I’m going to do it again, it must be different and it must be perfect.” I think to his remarkable credit, if you look at the tone and the type of movie that ‘Close Encounters’ is versus ‘E.T.’ versus ‘War of the Worlds’, and now this, they’re very different movies. Each one of them is a different genre, they’re just exploring some similar subject matter.

(L to R) Michael Keaton, Marisa Tomei, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, and Randy Quaid in ‘The Paper’. Photo: Universal Pictures.

MF: Finally, we recently lost legendary actor Robert Duvall, who you worked with on ‘The Paper’. What are your memories of working with him and what was it like watching him say the lines that you wrote?

DK: Oh, man, Duvall’s great. He’s terrific in it. That whole cast is a dream. I mean, you got Glenn Close, Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, then Marisa Tomei, and they’re all perfect for the part and they were all doing such a great job. I do remember one day on the set with Duvall, where it was one of the staff meetings, which are very funny, and they’re very hard because they were six or seven pages long and there’s ten characters in the scene. There’s a lot to coordinate and get right. He yells something at one point. I turned to Ron Howard, and I said, “Is he really mad or is the character mad?” He said, “I don’t know. I think both.” But it was completely indistinguishable, one from the other. It did create a little bit of distance because you don’t want to get in his eye line.

(L to R) Georgina Campbell and Joe Keery in ‘Cold Storage’. Photo: StudioCanal.

What is the plot of ‘Cold Storage’?

The film follows Travis (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell), two employees at a self-storage facility built atop a former military base, whose night shift transforms into a nightmare when a government-sealed parasitic fungus escapes from the underground levels. As temperatures rise, the microorganism unleashes its brain-controlling, body-bursting mayhem on anything in its path. The duo must join forces with a weathered bioterror operative to contain the threat before it triggers humanity’s extinction.

Who is in the cast of ‘Cold Storage’?

‘Cold Storage’ opens in theaters on February 13th.

List of David Koepp Movies:

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