Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're getting
into someone really fascinating, a real paradox
in modern film, Ari Aster. Definitely. A filmmaker
who, I mean, incredibly quickly just shifted
how we think about cinematic dread. Exactly.
He became like the face of elevated horror, that
whole movement. Right. And then almost immediately
he takes all that success, all that commercial
power. And just burns through it on these huge,
really personal, sometimes really divisive epics
that you can't even pin down genre wise. Yeah,
it's a wild trajectory. So our mission today
really is to look beyond those labels. We're
trying to map out, you know, the themes, the
commercial path of this director. Born in 86,
so he's still quite young. I'm 30s now, yeah.
But he's already built this significant body
of work. We've got a lot to draw on his early
life, which sounds pretty alienated growing up
in Santa Fe mostly. And that huge breakout success
with A24. We have to talk about Hereditary and
Midsommar, obviously. They were massive. And
then there's that sharp turn, that really expensive
pivot with Bo is Afraid and now his latest, Eddington,
the satirical Western. And the timeline is just
breakneck, isn't it? Hereditary in 2018. Then
Midsommar literally the next year, 2019. And
by 2023, boom, Bo is Afraid. three hours of pure
anxiety that apparently cost A24 a fortune. So
he's juggling these two roles, right? The like
totally uncompromising auteur and also this increasingly
savvy producer with his own company, Square Peg.
That's it. Square Peg. We'll definitely need
to get it. So the big question, I guess, for
you listening is why? Why would an artist who
finally achieves commercial success immediately
risk becoming, well... commercially untouchable?
It's a fantastic question. And his whole career,
really, it's like a perfect case study. You see
this constant push and pull between his, you
know, pure unrestrained artistic vision. He clearly
doesn't want to cut his ideas down. No, definitely
not. The runtimes alone tell you that. Right.
And then you have the cold, hard facts of the
studio system, even a studio like A24, which
is known for being artist friendly. Right. There
are limits. He didn't just arrive on the scene
quietly, he completely took over the conversation,
got this incredible leverage. Yeah, unprecedented
really after just two films. And then he used
that leverage immediately to make films that
are almost by definition really challenging for
a mass audience. Okay, so let's start at the
beginning then. To sort of understand where that
focus on trauma on messed up families comes from,
we need to look way back, his early life. Yeah,
definitely. Ari Aster, born July 15th, 1986,
New York City, Jewish family, and apparently
quite a creative one. His mother was a poet,
his father, a jazz musician. Right. So art was
in the house from the start. Seems like it. And
it sounds like it was a bit of a, well, nomadic
start too. Our sources mentioned this brief period
where the family actually lived over in England.
Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. His father
opened a jazz club in Chester, apparently. Didn't
last long, perhaps, but that... early taste of
you know a different culture being immersed in
that creative scene it probably shaped his outlook
somehow interesting but the place that really
seems to define his formative years where that
um that feeling of alienation comes in is santa
fe new mexico that's right they moved back to
the u .s when he was about 10 settled there and
that's where he spent the rest of his childhood
adolescence and this is where things start to
click into place with his later work isn't it
He talks very openly about feeling deeply alienated
then. He does. He described himself, I think
the quote was, as a fat kid with a stutter, just
feeling like a total outsider. Wow. And apparently
getting kicked out of Santa Fe Prep, a private
school there, just made that feeling worse, that
sense of not fitting in. Social awkwardness.
You really see that reflected in his characters,
don't you? The isolation, the paranoia, battling
these forces they can't quite grasp or name.
Absolutely. You can draw a direct line from that
self -described childhood loneliness to the people
on screen in Hereditary or Bo is Afraid. So it
sounds like he was maybe observing more than
participating, which I guess is perfect training
for a filmmaker. Very possibly. But alongside
that feeling of being on the outside, there was
this incredibly intense. Fixation on movies.
Ah, okay. The obsession begins. Oh, yeah. And
it started super early and really dramatically.
There's this amazing story about him seeing Dick
Tracy, the Warren Beatty one from 1990. He was
four years old. And there's a scene Beatty fires
a Tommy gun. And apparently the sound of the
violence on screen had such a visceral effect
on little Ari. What happened? He jumped out of
his seat and sprinted apparently six New York
City blocks down the street. His mom had to chase
after him. Get out at four years old. That's
intense. Isn't it? It's like. a perfect little
snapshot of the kind of psychological intensity
he later put audiences through. It wasn't just
liking movies. It was this extreme sensitivity
to their power, their ability to, you know, terrify.
That makes so much sense. So it wasn't just casual
viewing. Not at all. It quickly became serious
study. He wasn't just watching. He was like systematically
downloading film knowledge. He was apparently
obsessed with Leonard Maltin's movie guide. Oh,
wow. The Bible back then. Totally. And he spent
countless hours at the local Hastings video store.
He basically exhausted the horror section of
every video store around. Okay, so he really
did his homework in the genre trenches. He absolutely
did. And that deep dive into genre rules, into
horror conventions, that's why his films feel
so smart, so self -aware later. He knows exactly
what buttons he's pushing, which tropes he's
twisting or breaking. Right, so he goes from
being this obsessive watcher to wanting to create.
But filmmaking wasn't the first stop, was it?
No. Interestingly, the sources say his first
real ambition was to be an author, a novelist.
But that creative urge found its way into screenwriting
pretty quickly. And the sheer amount he wrote
back then is kind of nuts. How much are we talking?
Apparently, he wrote six full feature length
screenplays just while he was in high school.
Six. Wow. Yeah. He was just pouring it all out
onto the page, probably because, you know, actually
making a movie involves coordinating people,
money. logistics. Writing was something he could
control completely. That explains a lot about
his meticulous approach now. He's a writer first,
the architect of the story. Definitely. And then
he went on to get formal training, which really
cemented things. He studied film first at Santa
Fe University of Art and Design, finished there
in 2008. But the really big step, the career
maker, was getting into the American Film Institute's
graduate program, the AFI Conservatory in L .A.
Right, the AFI. That's huge. Huge. He was in
the class of 2010. And AFI is known for giving
students the resources to make really ambitious
short films, which is exactly what he did. And
that leads us straight into his breaks. or at
least his first taste of notoriety, the short
film era. Yep, roughly 2011 to 2017. And the
one that really put him on the map or maybe the
map of controversy was his AFI thesis film from
2011. The strange thing about the Johnsons, even
the title is unsettling. Oh, it is. And the film
itself. Well, it showed right away that Astor
wasn't going to shy away from anything. He was
diving headfirst into the deepest, darkest societal
taboos. What's the premise for those who haven't
seen it? It's pretty infamous. It's psychological
horror focusing on this seemingly normal suburban
family. But the core of it is that the father
is being subjected to this long term, non -consensual,
incestuous abuse by his own son. Right. It's
incredibly disturbing subject matter. And the
reaction was. Immediate and intense. It premiered
at the Slamdance Film Festival, but then it leaked
online and just exploded. Went totally viral.
I remember the buzz around it. Polarizing doesn't
even begin to cover it, right? Not really. The
sources describe the comments ranging from effusive
acclaim, people hailing it as genius, to disgusted
vitriol. Just absolute outrage. But for a young
filmmaker looking to make a mark, that kind of
reaction is powerful, isn't it? Even the negative
kind. It's gold, basically. It tells the industry,
pay attention to this guy. Whether you loved
it or hated it, you couldn't ignore it. It gave
him instant notoriety and sort of paved the way
for him to get a feature off the ground. Which
brings us to 2018, his feature debut, Hereditary.
Bankrolled by A24. And this film really becomes
the touchstone for that whole elevated horror
discussion. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we should
quickly unpack that term elevated horror for
listeners. Good idea. What does it actually mean
in this context? Well, when people talk about
hereditary as elevated horror, they mean it's
using the sort of skeleton of a horror movie,
you know, supernatural stuff, dread, people dying.
Right, the familiar tropes. Exactly. But the
real focus, the meat of it, is on really complex
characters, deep themes like grief and trauma.
The horror isn't just ghosts jumping out. It's
the psychological breakdown, the inherited pain
manifesting as something terrifying. So the plot
centers on the Graham family after the grandmother
dies. This very secretive woman. Who turns out
to have been the leader of a demonic cult, naturally.
Naturally. And this presence starts haunting
them. But like you said, the real horror feels
like the family imploding from guilt, secrets,
and that sense of... Inescapable inherited damage.
Precisely. And the film was just a phenomenon.
Commercially, it was huge, made over $80 million
globally. On what kind of budget? Tiny, around
$10 million. So at that point, it became A24's
biggest hit worldwide. That instantly made Astor
a very bankable name. And the critics loved it
too, didn't they? I remember Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone calling it the scariest film of
2018. They did. And it wasn't just the scares,
it was the craft, the meticulous way he builds
dread, and Tony Collette's performance, just
monumental. Oh, incredible. Absolutely central
to the film's power. And Astor's visual style
was already so distinct. Those miniatures, the
dollhouses that Annie Collette's character makes.
Right. They weren't just background props. No,
they were deeply symbolic. Representing the family
unit itself as this fragile, maybe preordained
thing, manipulated by outside forces just like
the characters felt they were. He picked up awards,
too. Most promising filmmaker from the Chicago
critics. He'd arrived. not just profitable, but
critically acclaimed. And then with barely a
pause, he follows it up just one year later,
2019, with Midsommar, which feels like a deliberate
counterpoint to Hereditary. It really does. It's
like the photographic negative in some way. Hereditary
is dark, claustrophobic, interior. And Midsommar
is folk horror, but set almost entirely outdoors
in relentless, bright, sunny daylight. Exactly.
He takes this group of American students to a
remote Swedish commune for their unique Midsommar
festival. Which, of course, involves some deeply
disturbing pagan rituals. Naturally. And the
genius move was swapping that dark, shadowy dread
for this sun -drenched pastoral horror. It's
unsettling in a totally different way. And thematically,
he shifts too, right? Family trauma to relationship
trauma. Yeah, the core is Donnie, played brilliantly
by Florence Pugh, who's dealing with immense
personal grief and the slow, painful collapse
of her relationship with her boyfriend. That
emotional breakdown happens against this backdrop
of very organized, ritualistic, communal horror.
It was another critical hit. Pugh's performance
got massive praise. Astor's direction again.
But this is where we start seeing the first signs
of him pushing against maybe commercial expectations.
Yes, the runtime issue. This is key. The original
cut of Midsommar that Astor delivered was, what,
nearly three hours, 171 minutes. Wow. For a sophomore
film, that's ambitious. Very. And A24, quite
reasonably, asked him to trim it down for the
wide theatrical release. They needed something
more manageable for multiplexes. But he wasn't
thrilled about that. It seems not. His instinct
even then was for the longer, more immersive
version. He did eventually release a director's
cut, which was closer to his original vision,
showing that commitment to the full scope. Still,
even the theatrical cut got nominated for Best
Screenplay at the Gotham Awards, I think. It
did. So the quality was recognized, even in the
shorter version. But it hinted at this tension,
his expansive vision versus the practicalities
of distribution. So the big takeaway from this
period is he earns incredible artistic freedom
through huge commercial success with Hereditary
and Midsommar. He proved challenging horror could
be big business. He basically got a blank check
from A24, didn't he? Looks like it. And what
does he do with that blank check? He immediately
goes for the riskiest, most expensive gamble
imaginable. Right. Which brings us to section
three, the pivot. He's riding high. It's 2020.
Everyone's still talking about Midsommar. And
he announces his next film, not horror, but a
nightmare comedy. A nightmare comedy. OK. And
he mentions, almost casually, that he hopes it'll
be about four hours long. Four hours. OK, so
right away the signals are there. Genre is shifting.
Runtime is ballooning. No more contained horror.
Precisely. And that project eventually becomes
Bo is Afraid, released in 2023. It didn't quite
hit four hours, but at nearly three. Still a
major ask for audiences. Yeah. It stars Joaquin
Phoenix as Bo. Who is Bo is this incredibly anxious,
deeply paranoid, middle aged guy who has to embark
on this surreal, almost picaresque journey to
visit his overbearing mother. It's like anxiety
and maternal control turned into a sprawling,
bizarre odyssey. OK, but. The crucial thing here,
the real pivot, is the budget. Oh, yeah. We need
to talk numbers. Hereditary and Midsommar were
around $10 million each, right? Right. Lean and
mean. Bo is afraid. The budget reportedly jumped
to $35 million. $35. That's a massive leap for
A24 to gamble that much on something so abstract,
so hard to market. It shows you just how much
Clout Aster had built up. They were betting the
Ari Aster brand itself. The quality, the vision
could carry a $35 million three -hour nightmare
comedy. And how did that bet pay off? Commercially,
it was a disaster, a huge flop. Ouch. What are
the figures? It only made about $12 million worldwide
at the box office against that $35 million production
cost. Plus marketing. So the loss was significant.
Sources estimate E24 lost over $35 million on
it. It's a steep, sharp drop from the profitability
of his first two films. And the reviews, did
they match the commercial reception? They were
all over the place, completely polarized. You
had some critics calling it a misunderstood masterpiece,
a brilliant dive into Freudian anxiety. And others.
Others found it rambling, self -indulgent. pointlessly
difficult, too long. There was zero consensus.
And when you spend that kind of money, you really
need some level of critical and audience consensus
to make it work. Which leads to Astor himself
reflecting on it. He talked about it in 2025,
apparently. Yeah, and it's quite revealing. He
admitted he was pretty sad that it was so maligned.
He acknowledged that lack of consensus whatsoever.
Okay. Did he express any regrets about the film
itself? He did say he would do differently now.
Specifically, he mentioned tightening the last
hour. which he felt ejected a number of people
from the theater. Hmm. That's interesting. Is
that genuine artistic self -critique, do you
think? Or is it the pragmatism of a director
realizing he maybe pushed the studio's goodwill
and the audience's patience a bit too far? It's
hard to say, isn't it? It's fascinating that
the director who meticulously crafted Hereditary
would admit to actively alienating viewers with
pacing and length. Maybe it's a bit of both.
A sober look at the financial reality. Perhaps.
But did that big financial hit send him scurrying
back to the safety of, say, a $10 million horror
film? Absolutely not. If anything, he doubled
down. He immediately followed Bo with Eddington.
Right. Eddington. 2025 release. Another big swing.
Another genre shift. This time it's a contemporary
Western satirical black comedy. Got it in one.
Co -produced again by A24 and his own company,
Square Peg. And significantly, it's set back
in New Mexico, near Santa Fe, in this fictional
town, Eddington. Returning to his roots, geographically
at least. And the setting isn't just geographical,
it's temporal too, right? Very specific. Extremely
specific. It's set slap bang in the middle of
2020, COVID pandemic lockdowns, the George Floyd
protests, massive social and political upheaval.
Wow. So he's moving from internal psychological
or family horror to very external contemporary
political satire. That's a huge leap thematically.
Huge. The plot apparently revolves around this
super tense mayoral election in Eddington between
the local sheriff and the incumbent mayor, reflecting
all that national turmoil on a small town scale.
It sounds like an ensemble piece looking at the
fractures in American society. A24 clearly still
had faith, though. They put serious weight behind
it. Premiered at Cannes Film Festival in competition
for the Palme d 'Or. Yeah. Artistically, he's
still playing in the major leagues. The prestige
is there. Did it reverse the trend of Bo? Is
afraid. Sadly, no. The pattern is almost identical.
Eddington had a reported budget of $25 million.
Okay, slightly less than Bo, but still substantial.
And it only brought in about $10 .5 million worldwide.
Another significant loss. And the reviews. Mixed
again. Respectable, maybe, but not rapturous.
Around 68 % on Rotten Tomatoes. Not the kind
of buzz that drives audiences to see a challenging
satirical Western. So the evidence seems pretty
clear. When Astor moves away from that elevated
horror label and into these bigger budget genre
bending auteur pieces, they currently lose money.
A lot of money. Yeah. The transition is stark.
His ambition seems fundamentally disconnected
from the commercial success that first enabled
it. He's making the films he wants to make, but
the audience that loved Hereditary isn't necessarily
following him there, especially at that price
point. Okay, so if the genres are constantly
shifting horror, nightmare comedy, satirical
western, what is the consistent Ari Aster signature?
Let's try and pin down the stylistic DNA here
in section four. That's a great question, because
there are constants. If you look at the core
themes, they run through everything. He's always
exploring grief, family trauma, psychological
breakdown, societal taboos. Right. He even called
hereditary a family drama, first and foremost.
That focus on the dysfunctional family unit seems
key, even back in The Strange Thing About the
Johnsons. Exactly. He's fascinated by what happens
when that basic social structure, the family,
just collapses under pressure, often internal
pressure. And there's always this feeling of
inevitability. The characters are trapped by
something bigger. Fate, genetics, history, cults.
Absolutely. Inherited doom is a huge part of
it. And he translates that internal pressure
into a very specific visual style. It's not just
what happens. It's how he shows it. His use of
mise -en -scene is incredible. Explain mise -en
-scene for us again. Sure. It's basically everything
you see within the frame. The set design, lighting,
props, how the actors are positioned. And Aster's
frames are meticulously controlled. Nothing is
accidental. Like the miniatures in Hereditary.
Or think about Midsommar. All that bright, beautiful
sunlight. It's the opposite of typical horror
darkness, right? Totally counterintuitive. But
by putting the horror right out in the open,
in the daylight, he makes it unavoidable. You
can't hide in the shadows. You have to confront
it. It's deeply unsettling because it's so bright
and clear. And technically... His use of long
takes is a real signature, too, isn't it? Those
extended, often unbroken shots. How does that
serve the horror or the unease? The long take
really forces you, the viewer. to sit with the
characters. There's no escape through editing.
The camera just stays there as the tension cranks
up or as something awful unfolds. It traps you
in their experience, their discomfort. It enhances
that slow burn feeling he's known for. Definitely.
It's all part of creating what he calls emotional
horror. It's not just about making you jump.
Okay, what's the distinction there? Emotional
horror versus, say, jump scares? Well, conventional
horror often relies on startling you, right?
The sudden noise, the monster in the closet.
Aster seems way more interested in unsettling
you on a... deeper existential level. His films
often show the complete disintegration of a person's
identity, their sense of control, their agency.
Think about Donnie in Midsommar or the family
in Hereditary. Their ability to make choices,
to act independently is just eroded, taken over
by the cult or by fate or by inherited madness.
So the real horror is realizing you're not in
charge of your own life. Exactly. That loss of
control, that existential dread, that's the core
of it. And when the shocking violence does happen,
And it does. Graphically, it feels earned, purposeful,
not just gratuitous because it emerges from that
psychological pressure cooker. Right. It's calculated.
But OK, while he's making these artistically
ambitious, commercially risky films, he's also
doing something else, something very practical
and strategic on the business side. Yes. He's
building an empire, or at least a foundation.
Square Peg, that's his production company. Founded
when? Co -founded in June 2019, right between
Hereditary and Midsommar's releases actually,
with the Danish producer Lars Knudsen. Smart
timing. And they have a deal with A24. They do.
They signed a two -year first -look TV deal with
A24 back in 2021, which is crucial. Why crucial?
Because it means even if his own directed films
are losing money, he remains deeply embedded
with the studio. He's a key creative partner,
helping shape their overall slate, bring them
projects. It gives him insulation. And Square
Peg isn't just about producing Ari Aster's next
challenging epic, right? They're diversifying.
Massively. Look at what they've produced or executive
produced already. Dream scenario with Nick Cage
in 2023, quirky, successful. Sasquatch sunset
in 2024, definitely out there. The upcoming Bologna.
So he's using his brand, his taste, to champion
other filmmakers with kind of adjacent sensibilities.
Bold, maybe strange visions. Seems like it. It
keeps him influential, keeps the company generating
revenue, and lets him build relationships with
talent who aren't afraid to take risks. And it's
not just film. They're making big moves into
TV adaptations, too. Okay, like what? Really
interesting IP. They're developing J .G. Ballard's
classic sci -fi novel, The Drowned World, also
Nick Darnaso's graphic novel, Acting Class, and
maybe most exciting for horror fans, a TV version
of Junji Ito's legendary manga, Uzumaki. Wow,
Uzumaki, that's ambitious. Incredibly. But it
shows Square Peg is thinking strategically building
a library of unconventional genre properties
that could be very valuable, even if Aster's
own films continue to be commercially challenging.
It's a smart hedge. Okay, so that brings us to
the future. Section 5, what's next? Given the
financial results of Bo and Eddington, you might
think he'd dial it back. But his announced project
list, it's huge. and incredibly varied. It's
staggering, honestly. It looks like a director
determined to prove he can do literally anything
regardless of cost or genre expectations. He
is absolutely not playing it safe. Where do we
even start? There's Antarctica. Yeah, this sounds
wild. It's a major animated feature he's collaborating
on with Don Hertzfeld, the guy behind It's Such
a Beautiful Day and World of Tomorrow. Oh, Hertzfeld.
Okay, that's a dream team for strange existential
animation. Totally. And Hertzfeld himself called
it big and... very expensive. So again, not scaling
back ambition there, totally different medium
and scale. And his live action plans seem even
more all over the map. He's got an untitled Sirkian
melodrama script. We need to explain that reference.
Douglas Sirk. Right. Douglas Sirk was this master
director of Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.
Films like All That Heaven Allows, Written on
the Wind, Think Gorgeous Technicolor, Intense
Emotions, stories about often women trapped by
social conventions, domestic suffering, hidden
desires, lots of heightened feeling. So how does
Aster, Mr. Dread, and Trauma fit into that? It
actually makes a strange kind of sense, doesn't
it? He's obsessed with family dysfunction, repression,
inherited pain, translating that into a lush,
visually rich, emotionally heightened style of
a circ melodrama. It lets him keep his core themes,
but ditch the horror aesthetic for something
completely different. High emotion is high art.
Fascinating. But then he also seems to be eyeing
much bigger, maybe more mainstream genres, too.
Looks like it. He's mentioned having scripts
for an untitled musical film. A musical. From
Ari Aster. Right. And also, perhaps most intriguingly,
an untitled big budget sci -fi satire adaptation.
Okay. Big budget sci -fi definitely suggests
he hasn't given up on trying to operate at that
major blockbuster level. Yeah. That's $100 million
plus territory. Where financial failure is really
not an option. Yeah. It shows the ambition is
still sky high. And then there's the mention
of an untitled gangster saga. Epic. Epic, like
multi -generational. Crime, corruption. Again,
a massive departure from haunted houses or Swedish
cults. Completely. It suggests he wants to tackle
these huge canvases, these classic American film
genres. But he hasn't totally abandoned horror.
No, not entirely. He still apparently has an
untitled horror film project on the docket somewhere.
And some other adaptations mentioned are Miss
Lonely Hearts and something called Don't Wake
Daddy. But the sheer weight and variety of the
non -horror stuff is striking. He seems determined
to break out of that box. And even the films
that struggled, like Eddington. He's not done
with them. He mentioned a sequel. Yeah, he said
he was cooking up something related, maybe featuring
some returning characters. It suggests that even
a film that underperformed commercially is still
a world he wants to keep exploring personally.
That really speaks to his level of commitment,
doesn't it? These aren't just jobs. They're massive,
complex worlds he feels driven to build, whether
or not audiences flock to them immediately. Absolutely.
The personal investment seems total. He's going
to make these films seemingly regardless of the
commercial consequences. Okay, let's try and
wrap this up. The outro. The cost of ambition.
What a journey we've traced. It's really something.
From these shocking student shorts to becoming
this horror phenomenon with Redditary and Midsommar
basically king of the hill at A24. Right, earning
all this creative capital. And then immediately
spending it all on Bo is a frayed... And Eddington,
these huge, polarizing, financially risky passion
projects, while at the same time building Square
Peg into this significant production player.
So the key takeaway, maybe, for you listening,
is seeing this tension play out so clearly. The
tension between this fiercely individual artistic
vision. Which insists on long run times, deep
psychological dives, difficult themes, ambiguous
endings. And the hard realities of the market.
Which so far seems to reward that vision most
when it's neatly packaged as $10 million elevated
horror. Exactly. The minute he steps outside
that box, ups the budget, gets more abstract
or satirical, the market, or at least the mainstream
market, seems to pull back. resulting in these
big financial losses for his backers. It's like
this constant negotiation playing out in public,
isn't it? Yeah. Between the very private internal
terrors he depicts so well and the very public
demands of Doc's office and audience reception.
And it's fascinating to loop it all back to where
we started, his own descriptions of feeling alienated
as a kid in Santa Fe, that obsessive need to
consume and then create harmless stories. It
feels so deeply connected to the recurring themes
in the films themselves, doesn't it? Inherited
trauma, the individual by societal forces, by
family, by cults, the overwhelming weight of
the world on the isolated person. That seems
to be the engine driving it all. Which leaves
us with a final thought, a question for you to
ponder. Looking at that incredibly diverse slate
of future projects, the melodrama, the musical,
the sci -fi, the gangster epic, what's the endgame
here? Is he deliberately trying to shatter that...
elevated horror label is he willing to take these
financial hits as the necessary cost of proving
he's more versatile a true auteur across genres
or is he just taking a temporary break from horror
a calculated detour while square peg builds resources
before eventually returning to the one genre
that has undeniably brought him massive success
and allowed his specific intense vision to flourish
commercially it's possible he needs the profit
engine of square peg maybe even another successful
horror hit down the line to actually fund these
other massive, expensive dreams. But whatever
the strategy. His career right now is just this
incredibly valid example of the risks, the rewards,
and maybe the sheer exhilarating cost of being
truly uncompromising in Hollywood today. Couldn't
have said it better myself. A fascinating figure
to keep watching.