{"id":530798,"date":"2026-06-12T01:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T01:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/530798\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T01:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T01:39:17","slug":"whalefall-brian-duffield-previews-the-anticipated-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/530798\/","title":{"rendered":"Whalefall: Brian Duffield Previews The Anticipated Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBrian Duffield<\/a>\u2019s Whalefall<\/a> arrived at April\u2019s CinemaCon with a modicum of buzz compared to heavy hitters such as Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three. But all of that changed when the Las Vegas-based convention debuted a show-stopping six-minute sequence in which Austin Abrams<\/a>\u2019 Jay Gardiner is swallowed alive by a sperm whale. The footage brought the house down, turning 20th Century\u2019s survival thriller into the biggest surprise of the entire event, and forcing film outlets to revise their lists of 2026\u2019s most anticipated films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved that no one knew we existed. When the movies-to-look-forward-to lists came out [ahead of 2026], we were not on them, and I just liked lurking in the shadowy depths,\u201d Duffield tells The Hollywood Report in support of Whalefall\u2019s first teaser trailer<\/a>. \u201cWhen CinemaCon came up, we had already been showing the clip to people for a while. So the studio was like, \u2018We should just show the clip instead of a trailer and really spook people.\u2019 And it seems like it did the trick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on co-writer Daniel Kraus\u2019 book of the same name, Whalefall sends Jay (Abrams) on a diving expedition to recover his deceased father\u2019s remains (Josh Brolin<\/a>\u2019s Mitt Gardiner). That\u2019s when he\u2019s consumed by the colossal 60-foot, 45-ton creature and stored in its multi-chambered stomach for eventual digestion. Jay has just one hour of oxygen left to forge an escape, applying the knowledge and skill set his late father passed on to him, while also reconciling their strained relationship in the process.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe highly emotional tale requires Abrams\u2019 Jay to save himself from the inside of a whale, but it was Duffield who had to protect Abrams from himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHonest to God, the only problem with Austin is that he will throw himself too hard into things. It was never like, \u2018Austin, you\u2019ve got to do this stunt.\u2019 It was usually like, \u2018Austin, you cannot do this because you\u2019ll die,\u2019\u201d Duffield shares in admiration of his lead actor. \u201cThe only arguments I ever really had with the guy were about how he\u2019s just so committed and so determined to do everything as viscerally real as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond the CinemaCon reaction, the confidence that 20th has in Duffield\u2019s third directorial effort is already palpable. Whalefall marks the first time that the writer-director has received the full weight of a major studio, and it\u2019s a long time coming for those of us who\u2019ve been tracking his screenwriting work since the 2010s, as well as his critically acclaimed outings as a director, Spontaneous<\/a> (2020) and No One Will Save You<\/a> (2023). The former received the most limited of limited releases during the pandemic, and the latter, while always a streaming play, had to promote itself amid 2023\u2019s labor strikes without the participation of its star-producer, Kaitlyn Dever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m thrilled that Whalefall is coming out theatrically. I know I\u2019ve never seen a movie like Whalefall before, not just because of the spectacle and the claustrophobia, but the emotion and audaciousness of what Daniel Kraus wrote,\u201d Duffield says. \u201cSo I hope audiences will go on this very insane, exciting experience with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a conversation with THR, Duffield provides an overview of what else audiences can expect from a movie set inside the innards of a whale, something the Whalefall crew called \u201cthe hardest thing they\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tEveryone has now seen at least some of the footage that received rave reviews at CinemaCon.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a very condensed version. It\u2019s a third of it. CinemaCon had the full scene, and this is the CliffsNotes version.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid that warm reception provide you and your team a major shot in the arm during post?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, but I loved that no one knew we existed. It was really nice. When the movies-to-look-forward-to lists came out, we were not on them, and I just liked lurking in the shadowy depths, as it were. Then, when CinemaCon came up, we had already been showing the full six- or seven-minute clip to people for a while. So the studio was like, \u201cWe should just show the clip instead of a trailer and really spook people.\u201d And it seems like it did the trick.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the longer version, the first minute or so is Austin\u2019s character [Jay Gardiner] swimming around peacefully and then, from afar, he sees the whale that keeps getting closer to him. It\u2019s the coolest thing he\u2019s ever seen. One of our little jokes was like, \u201cWhat if the Brachiosaurus from Jurassic Park just started stampeding towards you?\u201d It begins as the most awesome, beautiful thing you\u2019ve ever seen, and then it just changes direction very quickly. So the reaction out of Vegas was really cool, and I hope that people will feel similarly when they see the movie.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAustin Abrams<\/a> as Jay Gardiner in 20th Century Studios and Brian Duffield\u2019s Whalefall.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tGranted, it\u2019s only a first teaser, but I wish more movies would adopt this marketing approach of just dropping us into one bravura sequence.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, Disney was excited by the idea. That scene happens within the first 15 minutes of our movie. All but one or two shots in the trailer are from the first 15 minutes. When a guy gets eaten by an animal, that\u2019s usually the end of the movie, but we\u2019re saying that there\u2019s at least an hour more to go. And that\u2019s not the only set piece by any means. So hopefully people register that this is really the opening of our story in a lot of ways. There\u2019s quite a lot of movie to come after Jay goes down the chute. [Writer\u2019s Note: Duffield indicated on social media that the film has a 98-minute runtime.]<\/p>\n

\n\tI can draw a line between <\/strong>Whalefall <\/strong>and an older script of yours, so you clearly have an interest in underwater terror. But coming out of <\/strong>No One Will Save You<\/strong>, how did you land on this adaptation as your next film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI was in post on No One Will Save You when I found out about the book, and then I just became ravenous. I kept bothering Daniel Kraus to let me read it once he finished it. We didn\u2019t know each other at the time either. I literally just slid into his DMs. Then, once I read it \u2014\u00a0beyond the logline and the technical challenge being really appealing to me \u2014\u00a0the emotion and the characters just really spoke to me. It wasn\u2019t what I was looking to do next, but as soon as I read it, I was like, I might as well quit the business if this isn\u2019t what\u2019s next because nothing else will matter. So I\u2019m so lucky that Daniel and I got to collaborate on this movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you\u2019re going to make a movie involving whales and water, 20th Century is the place to do it. Did anyone try to connect you with James Cameron?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNo, we have not spoken yet. I\u2019d be scared shitless. (Laughs.) He was dealing with the best whale of them all, Payakan, and the studio knows I\u2019m a big Payakan fan boy. So I think he was busy jamming on Avatar: Fire and Ash as we were doing this. But I hope he sees Whalefall and likes it.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou probably split the shoot between a water tank and an actual body of water. Whenever filmmakers approach Steven Spielberg for advice about shooting on real bodies of water, his advice is \u201cdon\u2019t.\u201d Do you now understand why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s funny is that shooting on boats, on water, was by far the easiest part of our shoot. (Laughs.) We partially shot in L.A., so we had the best crews in the world. None of our boat stuff is really that elaborate, but it\u2019s all on the water. We didn\u2019t shoot anything dry for wet. But then everything inside the whale is insane. Every crew member said that it was the hardest thing they\u2019ve ever done. I\u2019m not saying this was harder than Jaws by any means, but shooting inside of a whale is its own set of very unique and unusual challenges. I won\u2019t do it again, but I\u2019m glad I did it once.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJosh Brolin<\/a> as Mitt Gardiner in 20th Century Studios and Brian Duffield\u2019s Whalefall.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tJosh Brolin went from throwing Austin Abrams around like a ragdoll in <\/strong>Zach Cregger<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s Weapons to embracing him as his son in Whalefall. You cast them before you knew their dynamic in Weapons?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I cast them before there was a trailer or anything. Knowing Weapons was an ensemble piece, there were a lot of questions: Do they have scenes together? Are they father and son? So I called Zach Cregger about it, and while he didn\u2019t want to spoil anything, he did tell me, \u201cThere\u2019s a scene or two of Austin and Josh together, but not as father and son.\u201d So that was enough for us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWeapons was so huge that when we tested Whalefall a bunch of times, I kept waiting for people to bring up Weapons, but it never came up. It\u2019s a testament to how talented Austin and Josh are. Once you\u2019re in the movie, you really don\u2019t think about them as other people. You just think about them as the characters that you\u2019re seeing. Everything about their characters in this movie is so different from Weapons. It has less to do with anything cool that I did and more to do with how talented those guys are.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd now a sperm whale is throwing Austin around like a ragdoll. It looks like he went through <\/strong>a lot<\/strong> to shoot this movie.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs.) Yeah, he did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWas he a good sport throughout it all?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOh my God, yeah. Honest to God, the only problem with Austin is that he will throw himself too hard into things. It was never like, \u201cAustin, you\u2019ve got to do this stunt.\u201d It was usually like, \u201cAustin, you cannot do this because you\u2019ll die.\u201d So the only arguments I ever really had with the guy were about how he\u2019s just so committed and so determined to do everything as viscerally real as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery shot in the trailer is Austin. When people see the full six-minute set piece in the movie, every shot is Austin. Inside the whale, every shot is Austin. There\u2019s also some great stitching with stunt performers and CG to give those people their due, but 95 percent-plus of the movie\u2019s stunts are Austin.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs you can see in the trailer, the inside of the whale is a very tight space, and there\u2019s not a lot of room to hide Austin. Even when he is sitting completely still inside the whale\u2019s stomach, it\u2019s a stunt. It\u2019s actually pretty dangerous because he\u2019s on a gimbal, and the stomach has pistons and manipulators. So everything in the full movie was dangerous, but Austin never got hurt. It\u2019s a real testament to Shauna Duggins, our stunt coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAustin goes a million percent at all times, even during the ADR sessions we did a couple of weeks ago. He ran around the room, screaming and doing everything he could to make it as good as possible. He\u2019d often want to go again because he thinks he can do everything better. He\u2019s just such a beast. It\u2019s amazing what he can do.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAustin Abrams as Jay Gardiner in 20th Century Studios and Brian Duffield\u2019s Whalefall.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tThe science behind the premise is relatively accurate. I heard Brolin say that Kraus researched it all a great deal. Apparently, sperm whales don\u2019t chew their food. They swallow their prey before it\u2019s stored in their multi-chambered stomach for eventual digestion.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, you can get swallowed by a sperm whale. It\u2019s funny, I think the things that will get dinged for not being accurate are actually accurate. Of course, there are liberties that we had to take for movie-making purposes, but we really tried to be as accurate as possible by working with a lot of whale experts. No one\u2019s ever done an endoscopy of a sperm whale for obvious [size and logistical] reasons, but based on everything we\u2019ve learned, there\u2019s a lot of science in the movie. A lot of it is unspoken science, too. Jay is not narrating like he does in the novel. So hopefully the audience infers certain things, and every now and again, Austin, as Jay, will chime in with a little bit of dialogue. But we did our best to make it as scientifically accurate as possible, and I\u2019m so sorry for people that are going to be scared about that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs <\/strong>Whalefall<\/strong> largely a dual narrative that flashes between the innards of a whale and the father-son relationship?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, it evolves throughout the movie. It starts off on a dual track and merges into a singular track. It\u2019s as real a life-or-death situation as you could possibly be in. There\u2019s also a Green Mile element to it in terms of Jay knowing how much time he has to get out of the whale in a very literal, physical way. Austin and I talked a lot about how there\u2019s no one to impress or to hide your feelings from when you\u2019re inside the stomach of a whale. You can feel whatever you\u2019re feeling. No one can hear you, and no one can see you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJay is in this very physical moment of, How do I live? But there\u2019s also this huge emotional wound with his deceased father. He\u2019s kind of living on his own deathbed once he gets swallowed by the whale. And like any deathbed, you\u2019re thinking about your life \u2014 what you wish you could have done differently and how you wish you could have resolved certain things. So those two are interlaced until they very literally become one element in the back half of the movie. I\u2019m really excited for audiences to see their emotional journey.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the bulk of Josh\u2019s work in the movie are these memories that Jay has of his dad and their very difficult relationship. The movie is about how to make peace with people that you\u2019ve lost, and they do a really beautiful job of that.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Brian Duffield and star Austin Abrams attended a trailer preview for their new movie Whalefall at Regal Sherman Oaks Galleria on June 8. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy 20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tWhalefall<\/strong> is your first <\/strong>proper<\/strong> theatrical release as a director.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, it\u2019s the first meaty one.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s long overdue for anyone who knows your prior directorial work, <\/strong>Spontaneous <\/strong>and <\/strong>No One Will Save You<\/strong>. The former dealt with a regime change and the pandemic, while the latter faced strike-related challenges. Even some of the produced films you\u2019ve written have endured a lot of highly unusual circumstances. Thus, how would you describe the feeling of not having to worry about any of those factors again?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOn the first movie I wrote that got made [Jane Got a Gun], the director didn\u2019t show up on set the first day of shooting, so that really prepared me that this career is like a whale. (Laughs.) It\u2019s a living, breathing organism that has a mind of its own, and you really can\u2019t control it. I can\u2019t control COVID or any of these other things that have happened to my career. Spontaneous was received very warmly because COVID inadvertently turned that movie into a movie about COVID. Nothing could have prepared me for that, but these are the things that happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNo One Will Save You was always for streaming, and I never once tried to make it theatrical. I never saw it as a punishment either. I was like, They\u2019re letting me make a silent weirdo alien movie with a really strange ending<\/a>. Hell yeah, great.\u00a0 At the end of the day, it\u2019s about the stories we tell, and I\u2019m just very lucky that I get to tell stories. So I\u2019m thrilled that Whalefall is coming out theatrically.<\/p>\n

\n\t[20th Century president of production] Steve Asbell and I are close pals now after No Will Save You and Whalefall, and we always talk about what we want to see in a movie theater experience. And you\u2019re seeing movies pop off this year because of that similar mindset. I know I\u2019ve never seen a movie like Whalefall before, not just because of the spectacle and the claustrophobia, but the emotion and audaciousness of what Daniel Kraus wrote. So I hope audiences will go on this very insane, exciting experience with us, and I\u2019m just happy they let me make movies, man.<\/p>\n

\n\t***
Whalefall opens this October in movie theaters nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Duffield\u2019s Whalefall arrived at April\u2019s CinemaCon with a modicum of buzz compared to heavy hitters such as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[194622,227241,18,117,19,17,13326,327,194623],"class_list":["post-530798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-austin-abrams","tag-brian-duffield","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-josh-brolin","tag-movies","tag-whalefall"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}