Yahoo Lifestyle Jack Quaid faces off against robot girlfriend gone haywire in twisty “Companion” trailer (exclusive)
"It's not like any other robot movie that's out right now — it's not A.I. gone wrong, it's A.I. gone right," writer/director Drew Hancock says.
Breakups suck, especially when your significant other is a malfunctioning robot.
That's the sticky situation Jack Quaid's Josh finds himself navigating in Companion, the buzzy upcoming romantic thriller written and directed by Drew Hancock.
Entertainment Weekly has your exclusive look at the latest trailer (above), which reveals for the first time that Josh's girlfriend Iris (Heretic's Sophie Thatcher) is an android designed to be the perfect, subservient partner.
But, since Josh jail-broke the settings of his "sex-bot," things turn bloody and violent during a weekend getaway in a remote cabin with his friends (played by Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, and Rupert Friend). In the trailer, Iris ominously announces via voice-over that the two moments in her life when she was happiest were the day she met Josh... and the day she killed him.
Warner Bros.
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Umm... spoiler alert? But don't worry, Quaid tells EW that there's so much more to the story than what's shown in the trailer. "It was one of the best scripts I've ever read," The Boys star says. "I never saw any of the twists coming, but it's not necessarily a movie that relies on a big reveal, and every reveal was fresh."
Hancock, who makes his directorial debut with the film, admits he didn't want audiences to know these specific plot points in advance. But he understands that you need to "sell the movie" by teasing at least a little bit of what it's about.
"The silver lining of showing the audience [that] this is a movie about a robot is it's a way to kind of get ahead of anyone dismissing it as another robot movie," the filmmaker tells EW. "Because it'd be so easy to just be like, 'This is M3GAN,' or, 'This is the Megan Fox movie [Subservience].' It's a little different to be like, 'No, this is a robot movie, but it's not like any other robot movie that's out right now.' It's not A.I. gone wrong, it's A.I. gone right."
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In fact, the big robot reveal happens early on. The story then wildly escalates as Iris takes matters into her own, artificial hands. "The movie doesn't really start until that reveal," the director explains. "It's a movie about self-discovery and, at its core, is a breakup movie about this woman finding empowerment through discovery of self."
In another fun twist, Quaid, known for his affable characters like Hughie on The Boys, plays against type in this movie. He calls his character Josh "a real s---head" and can't wait for audiences to root against him. "A lesser movie would've probably made my character the protagonist and Iris the antagonist who's going crazy, and Josh has to save the day," he says. "But I love how this movie is the slightly more realistic version where Josh is doing all of this for very selfish seasons. I love how the character with the most humanity is the robot in this story — it's such a cool turn on several genres."
"This is clearly a very codependent and toxic relationship, and she doesn't know that," Thatcher explains. "Iris has really lost herself in the relationship, doesn't really know who she is, and is so eager to please that she doesn't know what she even wants. I think that's a very human thing to feel. You can find yourself, in relationships, being so blindsided to the reality of it because you're just so in love with the person. I mean, she was programmed to be that way, but she can't help it."
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After her critically acclaimed work in Heretic, The Boogeyman, and Yellowjackets, Thatcher is becoming something of a scream queen, but don't expect Companion to feel like anything she's done before.
"The wildest day on set is in the trailer where I'm being dragged in the mud... there's so many wild days that I just pulled that out of my ass, but that was pretty tricky," Thatcher says with a laugh. "Being covered in mud was a little degrading but also badass, and I'm strangely used to being covered in mud — almost every project I've done is blood and mud, but this project tops it. The amount of blood that I had on me topped any amount of blood that I've ever had on me. I don't think you can go much further than that."
Companion hits theaters on Jan. 31.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
