Dust Bunny is a unique new fantasy action film that follows a young girl (Sophie Sloan) who hires a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) to help her kill the monster under her bed, which makes for quite the premise as the duo band together to take on an all-new kind of monster while also squaring off against a horde of assassins.
With the critically acclaimed new feature now widely available on Digital, we recently caught up with writer/director Bryan Fuller to break down birthing a new kind of monster, reunting with Mads Mikkelsen after Hannibal, making his directorial debut with such an inventive story, and a whole lot more.
Fuller is best known for creating the television series Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and Star Trek: Discovery. Throughout his illustrious career, he's also also been heavily involved with the shows American Gods, Star Trek: Voyager, and Deep Space Nine.
The film's synopsis reads, "Ten-year-old Aurora has a mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) who kills real-life monsters; he’s a hitman for hire. So, when Aurora needs help killing the monster that she believes ate her entire family, she procures his services. Suspecting that Aurora’s parents may have fallen victim to assassins gunning for him, the neighbor guiltily takes the job. To protect her, he’ll need to battle an onslaught of assassins and accept that some monsters are real."
Fuller directs a cast featuring Mads Mikkelsen, Sophie Sloan, Sigourney Weaver, Sheila Atim, David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson, and Line Kruse. In addition to writing/directing, Fuller also produced the feature alongside John Wick producers Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee.
Dust Bunny is now available on Digital HD!
Watch our full chat below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: What was the very first image, idea, or emotional hook that made Dust Bunny feel like a story you had to tell?
BRYAN: This story started as an Amazing Stories episode, and so, those were all designed to feel like Amblin movies of the ‘80s, and as we were trying to push it through the process, and it wasn't getting any traction, I just thought this should be a movie and as we were developing it with Steven Spielberg, you know, his notes, because we kind of came in with the one sentence pitch and said, you know, it's about a little girl who hires a hitman to kill the monster under her bed. His feedback was all about the psychology of Aurora's relationship with her monster, and the connections between the two and the importance of that emotional reality for her, and sitting there listening to his notes and his feedback, sitting in his office, next to the sled from Citizen Kane, I was like, okay, I need to direct this story, because A) it's an undeniable toy box of, you know, you got a monster. You've got a mix of genres. And, you know, both Mads Mikkelsen and I were big Bruce Lee fans. It was very impactful for both of us as we were discovering exploitation movies of the ‘70s and those sorts of influences. So, it started to go from, you know, an Amblin Entertainment kind of brand to also a variety of different ‘70s exploitation movies, whether that's blaxploitation or kung fu movies, and it started to become this soup of inspirations that I just wanted to dig into.
ROHAN: What sort of led to making the Dust Bunny the monster? And designing that specific look? Did you cycle through multiple versions before making a decision?
BRYAN: When the rubber hit the road, you know, I remember when I was writing the script and talking about the monster, I wasn't entirely sure what it would look like, and I didn't want to over describe it, because I was like, okay, this is going to evolve, so I wanted to be fairly like, loose in the description and the movie. And when we got closer to a possible production and we had to start designing a monster, I was like, okay, I want to reach out to one of my favorite comic book artists, Jon Wayshak, because, if you don't know his work, it's insane. There's madness in all of his characterizations, and there was a certain madness to the expression of the bunny. So I called John, and I said, I'm doing a monster movie. Would you like to design a monster? And he was like, absolutely, what does it look like? And I was like, well, it's part Highland cow, it's part piranha, it's part hippopotamus, and it's all bunny. And he went off and drew our bunny. And I actually have one of his original drawings of the bunny somewhere behind me.
He just kind of amalgamated all of those influences in a way that was cute and deadly and had this wonderful little underbite that gave it an immediate characterization, and also the ability for me to project onto it like a bulldog, and it was both scary and cute, and that was very important to be representative of this little girl's imagination of what a monster would be.
ROHAN: The bunny looks incredible. How much of the monster was practical versus CGI?
BRYAN: If you see just the head and the hands, chances are it's the puppet, which we built. The wonderful folks at Legacy Effects built this amazing puppet that's as tall, taller than I am its head, and then its ears are as tall as I am, and I'm like, you know, pushing 6’4 on top of its head, so it's this 12 foot tall puppet with the ears. And so, if you see that, if you see the head and the teeth, and there are scenes when the bunny is coming up from underneath the bed, that's the puppet, as well as guys in green suits, like lifting up the bed, and if you see the full body, that's CG.
ROHAN: This is your feature film debut and you’re working with Mads Mikkelsen again after Hannibal. What was it about him, as a collaborator, that you knew you wanted him to be part of this project?
BRYAN: My biggest instinct was that he's Mads Mikkelsen, and we've seen him in so many roles where he's playing the sort of like villain, you know, whether he’s a James Bond villain or an Indiana Jones villain or a Marvel villain, and there was something about these qualities where you would automatically assume, because of the sort of steely European aesthetic, that he's going to be a baddie, and knowing him as a human being, and knowing his boyish charm and his affability and his accessibility as a man and a father and a grandfather and how important family is to him. There were qualities about the person I know that I wanted the audience to see. So there are scenes with him and Sigourney where he's got, you know, particularly out in the elevator, like right before everything goes nuts in Act Three, where he has such an intense likability and accessibility and the ability to convey deep emotions that I wanted to play with the colors in the Crayola box that we didn't get to use on Hannibal.
ROHAN: This story centers around Sophie Sloan’s character Aurora, who that is having all these wild things happen around her. With the story being told from a young girl’s perspective, what was the most challenging aspect of finding the right tone for the movie?
BRYAN: Working with Sophie was such a delight. We both had the same amount of experience making movies, which is none, and what was really important for me is for her to have a great experience making this movie and preserving her childhood and protecting her childhood. And one of the smartest hires on the production that we made was Line Kruse, who was sort of acting coach/concierge and translator to the adult world for Sophie to have. And Lena was a former child star, she was kind of a Danish Jodie Foster, had a big successful movie in Denmark when she was a little girl, and has gone on to other things. She still acts, but she's also an acting coach and works a lot with kids, and there's something about when I told her about this story, she was like, okay, whether it's me or somebody else, it's so tricky for a child to be in this adult world and navigate it and the assumptions that you make, and, you know, there may be a situation where, if you give a child actor an adjustment in a scene they may interpret that as they failed, and so, I wanted to create a bubble around Sophie that was going to allow her to be a child and have fun, but also be a professional and that bubble is Line Kruse.
ROHAN: You’re so closely associated with television. Was there anything you learned from directing your first feature that differed from your experience on television? Was there anything about the directing experience specifically that you didn’t anticipate?
BRYAN: What I didn't anticipate was the intimacy of the experience, because when you're a showrunner, there are a constant barrage of fires that you're putting out, and you can't really be present for any one thing, because you're sitting in the production meeting, and then immediately after that production meeting, you go into post and you're editing, and immediately after that, you're going into a casting session, then immediately after that, you're running home to rewrite a scene that may be shooting tomorrow.
And, you know, with a movie, there's one story that you're telling. With a television show, there's eight, there's thirteen, there's, you know, twenty-two, there's twenty-four, there's a lot of things that are coming at you without an end in sight, and by the time you get to the end, you're kind of limping across the finish line. But with the movie, as a director, what was so wonderful is the collaboration with the department heads. I was very, very fortunate to be working with Nicole Whitaker as a cinematographer, who taught me so much about directing, and was the perfect partner for me as a first-time director. And not only held my hand through the process, but taught me so much about the process, and also, was just a great hang.
So, my friendship with Nicole is very important. My friendship with Olivier Bériot, who's one of our wonderful costume designers. He and Catherine Leterrier had collaborated before, and Catherine did all of Sigourney's costumes and has been working with Sigourney since 1987’s Gorillas in the Mist, and Olivier was her protege. And now, Olivier was doing everybody else in the movie, so all the fantastic Sheila Atim costumes, all the crazy shit that Mads was wearing throughout the picture was all from his French maximalist personality. And so, I think the thing that I learned and loved about directing a movie, and that was intoxicating, was the ability to be present on set, surrounded by people who had my back and were elevating my work and allowing me to do good work.
In visionary creator Bryan Fuller’s (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) fantastical and wickedly inventive feature directorial debut Dust Bunny, a 10-year-old girl joins forces with her hitman neighbor to confront each other’s monsters.
Ten-year-old Aurora has a mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) who kills real-life monsters; he’s a hitman for hire. So, when Aurora needs help killing the monster that she believes ate her entire family, she procures his services. Suspecting that Aurora’s parents may have fallen victim to assassins gunning for him, the neighbor guiltily takes the job. To protect her, he’ll need to battle an onslaught of assassins and accept that some monsters are real.