Drew Pearce hoping there’s room at box office for Hotel Artemis
In a summer of celluloid gorillas, director Drew Pearce hopes the dry wit and idiosyncratic nature of Hotel Artemis, plus Jodie Foster, will be enough to compete, he tells
Until a few weeks ago director Drew Pearce was in the dark as to whether his noir sci-fi thriller, Hotel Artemis, was going to make it to the big screen. It was even suggested to him that it might not be a tragedy if it didn’t.
“I didn’t know where it was going to be going out,” says the matey Englishman, from his adopted Los Angeles home. “My editor, who is a millennial, was saying, ‘oh it would be fantastic if it goes on Netflix and streaming… so many people will see it’. I’m a little older and in my heart of hearts hoped it would go into cinema.”
Set in a cyberpunk near-future LA, the movie stars Jodie Foster as a nurse in charge of a hospital for career criminals. She isn’t the only A-lister Pearce has recruited — David Bautista of Guardians of the Galaxy has a major role, as does Zachary Quinto (aka Mr Spock in the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboots).
An even bigger star — one to be shortly seen in another summer movie — also pops up at the end, testament to Pearce’s networking powers and the high regard with which he is held in Hollywood, where he has worked for over a decade as screenwriter and script-doctor.
Despite the cast and the movie’s lavish look — impressive considering its $8m budget — Hotel Artemis obviously has its work cut out. This is the summer of the mega franchise, when even a Star Wars caper directed by Ron Howard risks coming unstuck.
There is, moreover, some irony to the fact Pearce, 42, finds himself the little guy up against the celluloid 800lb gorillas. He is, after all, a product of the tent-pole business, having co-written Iron Man 3 and originated the story for Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.
“I’ve made my living as a screenwriter and worked on some lovely big films,” he says. “For my first as director I wanted to make something I knew I could stamp my personality on. It’s definitely a step-up — it’s weird to learn more in one year than in the rest of your career put together.”
The assumption is that Hotel Artemis became a foregone conclusion once Jodie Foster got involved. The truth is more complicated, say Pearce.
“At no point did it feel there was a genuine green light,” he says. “Jodie is a massive actor and she helped as seal of approval for getting actors. But she in herself [wasn’t a green light]. The times we live in for making movie are insane…even when you have Jodie Foster. There are really only two sorts of viable movies — $5m horror movies and $200m tent poles. Everything in between is up for grabs.”
The film is topical, especially in Ireland — though Pearce wasn’t aware of this when making it. Events at Hotel Artemis unfold against a backdrop of civil unrest over plans to privatise the water service.
“No way,” gasps Pearce when I fill him in on the water protests in Ireland. “The fact is that California was going through a large drought. Nobody was allowed to use hoses. And I heard about one rich guy who had built a swimming pool at a time when contractors were prohibited from filling pools.
“So he shipped a giant truck of ice from a different state and poured it into the pool to fill it up. Stuff like that shows the divide between the 1% and the rest of the world.”
Pearce is an unlikely Hollywood insider. He’s well aware of this. Indeed, you imagine him waking each morning mildly surprised that he’s working in movies. He grew up in England, the son of Scottish parents, and initially found employment as a journalist, with glossy trend bible The Face, while fronting an alt country rock band.
His passport into film was No Heroics, a meta ITV2 comedy chronicling the lives of a group of superheroes during their downtime at their local pub, The Fortress. Nominated for best new comedy at the British Comedy Awards, it brought him to the attention of Marvel which hired him to pen a screen adaptation of its Runaways series.
That gig didn’t work out — though a version with a different script made it to screen — but Pearce had one foot in the door and, in 2011, it was announced he would be working with Shane Black on Iron Man 3
“I grew up in a little suburban town. My parents were working-class Scottish. Nobody I knew ever had a connection to the entertainment industry. Growing up, I didn’t even know I was allowed to do this. You hear of writers and directors making their first film when they’re seven and all that stuff. I wouldn’t have had even known I had permission to do that… I honestly feel that if there was one thing that helped me it was the east coast Scottish work ethic.”
There have been disappointments — the Runaways, a US reboot of No Heroics. Through it all, he’s tried not to become cynical. “You have to have a relatively thick skin,” he says. “As a writer you learn very quickly how the bus works from being thrown underneath it. That said, you can’t stop caring. You have to keep letting yourself be hurt a little by the rejection. It’s because you care that it hurts. Nobody moves to Hollywood to do something they don’t believe in. Hacks aren’t born. They are created.”
Arriving on the heels of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and ahead of the next Marvel feature, Ant-man and the Wasp, Pearce knows Hotel Artemis has the odds against it. On the other hand, amid those behemoths, perhaps its intimate scope and dry wit will be enough to carry the day.
“The timing of the release is a little above my pay-grade,” he says. “However, it definitely feels that it might be a little bit of a palette cleaner and something that co-exist with those giant movies.
“Eight weeks ago I was still making this little movie and now it’s going out into the battle ground of blockbuster season. It’s hard not to be intimidated and worried. I’ve got to hope that something a little bit more idiosyncratic, a little more handmade and human, might make it through.”
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