John Krasinski Pushed 'A Quiet Place: Day One' Director To Make New Film His Own

By Andrew Sanford | Film | June 28, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Film | June 28, 2024 |

Plenty of sequels try to capture the feel of their predecessors. Hell, many are one-for-one recountings of the first with slightly different skin. Many sequels find themselves with a different director than whatever film preceded it. Studios will still want the new movie to resemble the original, forcing a new director to do something that may go against their style. That does not seem to be the case for A Quiet Place: Day One.

Michael Sarnoski has been a filmmaker for over a decade. He made his directorial debut with the much-loved Pig. It is a film about a truffle hunter, played by Nicholas Cage, who goes in search of his kidnapped pig. Sarnoski jumped from Pig into the Quiet Place… Cinematic Universe (I don’t know if it has a name)? The writer/director wrote and directed A Quiet Place: Day One, and seemed to have a fine time doing so.

While speaking with ComicBook.com, Sarnoski spoke about how much freedom he had regarding making the film his own. “Yeah, I think it was just a lot of conversations. A lot of back and forth,” Sarnoski said of working with producer, and director of the first two films, John Krasinski. “He presented an idea of ‘Hey, we want to do a New York, Day One movie.’ And then, he really gave me the freedom to be like, ‘What does that mean for you? How could that be a Michael movie?’”

Sarnoski continued, telling the site, “He didn’t want to force me to try and emulate the past movies. So, I just had to think about what kind of characters I wanted to explore. How I wanted to see this world. Then, we had a lot of back and forth about the little things we can do to sort of suggest things about the other movies. And, see some characters. But, it always had to feel in service to Sam’s journey and her core emotional story.”

It’s nice to hear that Sarnoski was given the amount of freedom he (at least says he) was. We’ll find out this weekend if that makes for a good movie, but the buzz is certainly positive. What we do know for sure is that Sarnoski enjoyed working with Krasinski, as he told ComicBook.com, “So, I was just brainstorming and talking. Thankfully, he was very generous and open with the idea of ‘make this yours and do what speaks to you.’”

This is the kind of story that makes me excited for a film I wasn’t initially excited for. I didn’t love the first two films, though the second one holds a special place (a quiet place, if you will) in my heart for being the first I saw in theaters post the initial stay-at-home orders. But I like hearing that a director has creative freedom on a sequel. I’m a sucker for positive buzz and big summer movies. It’s the little things.