Companion’s Director and Cast on Its Gruesome Finish and Future

Pre-release marketing for Warner Bros.’ Companion might’ve had you certain the entire game was given away. That is and isn’t true: yeah, Iris (Sophie Thatcher) learns she’s a robot, and you can make an educated guess what happens next. But for writer/director Drew Hancock and its two leads, getting there was a bit of a creative challenge.

Shortly after the robot reveal, it turns out Iris is a pawn in a scheme by her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) and his friend Kat (Megan Suri) to kill Kat’s boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend) and steal the cash in his vault. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hancock revealed Iris would’ve originally killed Sergey with an automatic wine cork. A final Iris vs. Josh showdown was always in the cards, but when it came time to kill Josh, he was unable to top a wine cork to the brain, so he swapped things around: now Josh would get the wine cork, and Sergey took a pocket knife to the throat, a weapon Josh placed into Iris’ things. “Switching that was perfect,” said Hancock, “because then Jack could be complicit in the planting of the knife, so it all worked out.”

As for Thatcher and Quaid, they both felt a bit nutty shooting Josh’s demise, which was done at 5 am. Thatcher admitted to EW she’d been “pretty fucking exhausted” by that point, which “added to the madness of it all. I think I had three Celsius cans, and it felt kind of out of body.” Quaid echoed that sentiment, and called it “one of the most creative ways I’ve ever died in something. It was our final scene we shot, and it was so funny to die in that way and then have everybody clap as the movie was over.”

Companion ends with Iris driving off with Sergey’s money and now with full self-control thanks to a technician from her creator, Empathix. Hancock told Variety he’s got tiny ideas of a followup, but they’re just that: small thoughts about what Iris sees when she’s sleep, potentially finding love again, or giving human life a spin. (Owning a farm was one suggestion, or just “enjoying the sunset.”) Alternatively, there’s always the Smile route and focusing on a new protagonist—anything is on the table for Hancock, except for creating a Westworld scenario. But such plans will have to wait, as he’s now working on a reboot of The Faculty.

Let us know what you thought about Companion, and if it should come back for more sci-fi thrills, in the comments below.

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