Bryan Fuller has created singular series such as “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal” and has written much more. He is currently preparing his feature film debut, which is scheduled to make his debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
“Dust Bunny” will premiere on Monday at TIFF as part of Midnight Madness, starring Sophie Sloan as Aurora. She then hires Hitman (“Hannibal” star Mads Mikkelsen) to take care of the matter… if he alone believes her.
Fuller says the story began as one of the possible episodes of the 2020 Apple TV+ series, “Amazing Stories,” based on an anthology show created by Steven Spielberg in the ’80s.
“In a sense, it’s Spielberg, a homage to traumatic childhood films from the ’80s, like ‘Poltergeist’ and in particular ‘Gremlins’,” says Fuller. “It was thought and designed to be a ‘amazing story’ story. But when we were developing it for Apple, it was a deathbed, and since many of the stories we developed hadn’t made progress with Apple, I was like, “I know you’re a great movie.” ”
Fuller has been a busy TV writer, creator and showrunner since he first wrote for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1997, so he thought little about directors.
“I usually spent a lot of rewrites so I didn’t have much time to oversee,” he says. “I’m professional and generous. If I’m overseeing so many writing responsibilities and how much I’m going to rewrite as a showrunner, it seemed like I couldn’t do both. I didn’t seem to be 100% devoted to the script. I was the studio head and that was a bit of a disaster.
Fuller says that his favorite part of the director was to make the film a reality with his young star, Sloan.
“My favourite days were working with Sophie Sloan, who had just as much film experience as I did. “With Sophie, we started to find each other and play in a way that we wouldn’t normally do with actors with a certain experience. My days with Sophie were performance dates, where I was able to explore performances, find cadences of dialogue, and play in playful ways.
Film was a different medium for Fuller, but he brought visual talent and love of colour, and often permeated his projects. He says he had a unique shared language for discussing the colours of “Dust Bunny” with cinematography director Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.
“Our first conversation was about my previous work,” Fuller says. “If the ‘pushing daisies’ is very sweet and the ‘Hannibal’ is very flavorful in terms of color palette and lighting style, then this should be mango chicken. It should be flavorful and sweet and have a truly dynamic flavor profile.
Ultimately, despite some horrifying scenes, Fuller considers “Dust Bunny” to be the perfect gateway horror for families to watch together.
Check out the “Dust Bunny” trailer below.
