More than 20 years after he directed the first two Harry Potter films — arguably helping sowing the seeds for today’s British film industry in the process — Chris Columbus has returned to the U.K. and for another hopeful franchise-starter.
Much like Potter, “The Thursday Murder Club” — now on Netflix — is adapted from a much loved and widely successful book, this time by Richard Osman, but the similarities don’t stop there. The quintessentially British film also charts the adventures of a group of friends from different walks of life residing in a grand castle-like building and solving riddles together. There is, of course, a little age gap. Rather than young school children, our heroes are octogenarians living in a rather upmarket retirement home (the fictitious Coopers Chase). And, as the title suggests, the riddles they’re solving aren’t about magic but murder.
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As he did with Potter, Columbus has lined up a who’s-who of British acting talent, with “The Thursday Murder Club” led by Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie, alongside supporting roles for the likes of David Tennant and Naomi Ackie. As he notes, “the world’s most professional and most talented actors” are in the U.K.
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Speaking to Variety, Columbus discusses keeping in a scene he describes as the “emotional core” of the film that execs assumed he’d cut out, throwing in some “creative flourishes” not in the books (including an X-rated sketch) and why his work on “The Thursday Murder Club” and “Harry Potter” can all be traced back to a little-known film he wrote in the 1980s.
The book is a cosy and comforting read — despite all the murders, of course — and you’ve managed to bring that ‘warm mug of cocoa on a Sunday night’ feeling to screen. How easy was that?
I fell in love with the characters when I read the book. They were so complex and funny and real and very individual. I could see the cast immediately. I had a little notebook and made a list of my first four choices, and they all said yes. That has not happened since ‘Harry Potter.’ It was remarkable. From the very first read-through rehearsal, there was this sense of camaraderie. Sir Ben and Dame Helen had worked together, I think, with the Royal Shakespeare Company over 30 years ago, but none of them had been on screen together. And it was just this extraordinary chemistry from the get go.
Were you already a fan of the book before the film came your way?
I was in Prague working on ‘Nosferatu’ and this book came in. I hadn’t heard of it before, and read it and devoured it within a day and immediately fell in love with it. I’ve done some book adaptations that have been successful, some that have been not successful, and I realized that the ones that are more successful are when you actually, as a director, become a fan of the material. And I became sort of an obsessive fan.
I’ve read about the lengthy pitching session you had to go through to get the director’s job on ‘Harry Potter.’ Was this similar?
Thankfully, because of Potter, I think they realized that an American could tackle something that’s very, very British.
Ol Parker was originally down to direct. At what stage was the project when you took over?
There were two scripts that were developed and for some reason in the developmental process, people did not want to be faithful to the book, which I couldn’t understand. The script I had read had the Thursday Murder Club involving themselves in a computer scheme — nothing to do with a book. So when I came on board, I said, we have to be as faithful as possible. I felt that we needed to remain faithful to the plot and to the feeling that Richard conveys when he’s writing this material. The thing I loved about the book is it’s incredibly funny. The characters have this sharp, biting, British humor. And it’s extraordinarily emotional. Murder mysteries tend to sometimes be cold and procedural, but I just felt that this was very emotional.
There are some scenes I don’t think are in the book, including one where Celia Imrie’s character Joyce is doing a life drawing and decides to add — how do I put this? — some private parts to her illustration. Was that just an additional creative flourish?
That was an additional flourish, believe it or not. And you’re the first person who’s asked me about that.
Thank you for telling me. I’ll wear that as a badge of honor.
When we shot the sequence, what Joyce was sketching was not what ended up in the final scene. I think it was an ad lib by Helen Mirren who was commenting on Joyce’s talent as an artist. And when she said something to the effect of, ‘you’ve really got a gift Joyce,’ it occurred to us that maybe we should digitally enhance the painting to take it to the next level. It was something I just wanted to try and preview to see if the audience responded to it, and the audience responded to it a big way.
And there’s also a fun moment when Helen Mirren is described as looking a bit like the late Queen, who she’s obviously played on numerous occasions. Was that a little hat tip to her career there?
I tend to want to avoid sort of easter eggs or jokes that they feel like they will only play in a contemporary setting. But that particular joke felt appropriate at the time. And it works well with the audiences. We also did a scene that’s not in the book that really came in the middle of the shoot when I realized there was a section of the film in the third act where we lost touch with the core of ‘The Thursday Murder Club.’ And it was a scene where we wanted to utilize the talents of the four to help get Jason (Tom Ellis) out of prison. So it was a scene that was written by Katie Brand later on in the process that we put in the film. And it’s one of my favorite scenes in the film, where Pierce’s character Ron is wearing his suit that he wore to two weddings prior.
Is Coopers Chase based on a real retirement community?
It’s not based on a retirement community that I had seen, but based on what Richard wrote about. Particularly in America, most retirement communities can be very dreary and depressing, and I wanted to sort of create, for lack of a better comparison, the Hogwarts of retirement communities. This particular retirement community doesn’t really exist. But what if it did? It would be a place that I think everyone from the age of 40 would want to check in — a place filled with life and filled with humor.
With films such as this, there’s often a concern that they might be seen as making fun of the elderly. Was that a worry or something that you thought about going into it.
I remember my grandmother saying to me years ago that she felt invisible, that she would go into a grocery store and there was a certain point when she reached a certain age that people didn’t not notice her, but sort of looked right through her, like she didn’t exist. So I was really attracted to Richard’s thematic situation where people of a certain age can be valid and can actually make a difference and contribute to society. And I thought that was such an important part of the books, that these four individuals actually make a difference, and that in your twilight years, whether you’ve got five, 10, 15 years left remaining, you can actually create change and make a difference.
And this also delicately deals with the subject of memory loss and dementia, which is a difficult subject to tackle in any creative format.
[SPOILER ALERT] Yeah, it was part of the effort. And towards the end of the film, there’s also a scene that was always out of every script that I read. People were terrified about dealing with the fact that two people were ending their lives. A few executives had told me: ‘Oh, you’re going to cut that. You may shoot it, but you’ll cut it. It’s going to be too much for the audience.’ And I thought that this is really the emotional core of the entire novel. For me, this is what it’s about. And we fought to keep that in and audiences have been accepting of it. And I think that’s what takes this away from your traditional murder mystery.
I would say, as a Brit, your film does paint a sort of picture postcard image of England. There are, obviously, murders. But it always seems to be a wonderfully sunny summer’s day and there’s always glorious sunlight beaming into the rooms. I just wanted to check that you had actually spent time here.
I realized going into it we had absolutely no control over what the weather was going to be like. With your traditional British shooting day — 90% of the time it’s going to be dreary and cold. We never got that. We got this summer that was filled with sunlight. It was ridiculously sunny here and we never, ever expected to get that look on film. Even in at the final shot of the film of the retirement home, we shot at 5.30am the morning. And we shot maybe 25 different versions of the drone shot pulling back. At one point, the sun burst through the clouds and we got this extraordinarily beautiful shot, and it’s in the film. We were very lucky.
There are three more books in “Thursday Murder Club” franchise already published and one more coming out soon. I assume discussions are already underway about a sequel?
Discussions are not underway, only because, I think being a responsible company, Netflix is just waiting to see what the reaction to the film is going to be. In other words, how many people are going to watch it on opening weekend? It’s a very odd thing having lived through decades of opening your film on a weekend and seeing how the box office performs, and now everywhere around the world, at the same time, people can hit play. And that’s quite comforting, because you don’t have to be looking for box office results. But at the same time you realize that that is really what makes or breaks the next one or two films. How many people will watch on that first weekend? And once we find that out, in two weeks, we will know if we’re making a second or a third film.
Would you be keen to go back and direct more?
I would love to. Just the fact that I had such a wonderfully creative time working with these actors. I would show up in a second.
This is the first film you’ve made in the U.K. since ‘Harry Potter.’ How did it feel to come back?
It’s amazing, because the same thing that held true for Potter held true here in terms of the actors that work in this part of the world. There’s a sense of deep professionalism. You’re not banging on the trailer door asking someone to please come to set. Everyone is incredibly punctual. Everyone knows their lines. Everyone is, I think, so professional, because this they do theater, they do television and they do film. The world’s most professional and most talented actors are in this part of the world.
There are obviously many other similarities between ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ and ‘Harry Potter,’ chiefly that you’re directing the first film adaptation of a beloved and insanely popular book series. Was this something that you thought about? Did you think: ‘Oh, I’m doing this again’?
When I was doing Potter, I just felt the pressure of Potter in a much bigger way, because I realized that at that particular point, if anything went wrong and people didn’t respond to the film and the public really rejected the film, I was essentially responsible for killing the franchise. So I carried that with me every day on the first ‘Harry Potter’ film. It’s not a great situation to put yourself in mentally. In terms of ‘The Thursday Murder Club,’ I felt more of a sense of freedom because of Potter. I was really, as a director, in the hands of these incredibly talented, professional actors, and I felt secure.
There are also many similarities in the stories. And you have a group of people from different walks of life living together in a big, British stately home and solving mysteries. There’s obviously an age gap, but ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ does kind of feel a little like ‘Harry Potter’ for the older generation.
I didn’t talk about it much when we were doing the publicity for Potter, but the reality is, I sort of put myself in this situation back in the 80s, when I wrote an original screenplay called ‘Young Sherlock Holmes.’ In ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ there were basically two teenage boys and a teenage girl solving a crime in Victorian England, and essentially it was the basis for Ron, Harry and Hermione. Not a lot of people saw that movie, but it exists. It’s out there somewhere. And it really sort of was the reason I fell in love with Potter to begin with, and all these years down the road, why I fell in love with ‘The Thursday Murder Club.’ As I was growing up as a filmmaker, I was obsessed with British films. I was obsessed with Hammer films. I still think ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is the greatest film ever made. I was obsessed with Charles Dickens and all the novels. So I really was preparing to direct a film like this.
So ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ feels like part of a natural progression?
It really does feel like that. It feels very comforting for me to be back here. It just feels like part of my life.
There’s also a sense that the British film industry that we see today is there very much because of ‘Harry Potter,’ because that film franchise was deliberately made in the U.K. and everything that grew out of that. So perhaps you might not have been able to make ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ here if you hadn’t have made ‘Harry Potter’ all those years ago?
We shot ‘Harry Potter’ at Leavesden Studios and, let be honest about what Leavesden was back then — basically an old airplane hangar. And it’s extraordinary for me to come back here 20 years later, and there are 20+ full sound stages at Leavesden Studios that are a result of Potter. And we couldn’t rent them because they were all booked! It was an irony that was not lost of me.
Rowling famously had a ‘Brits only’ rule for actors on ‘Harry Potter.’ Did Richard insist on something similar for ‘The Thursday Murder Club’?
With Potter, it was something I was on board with immediately. I thought, okay, of course, why not? Since then, however, so many Brits have come to the States utilizing their American accents very successfully. It’s amazing that that that’s happened. So no, the ‘Brits only’ rule doesn’t really apply to this. But if you look at the film, it’s all Brits. So maybe it’s still in my DNA.
