The writer-director, fresh off the hit Evil Dead Rise, talks about his new film company that has already signed a deal with a Warner Bros offshoot
Some new film companies take time to make a mark, but not Doppelgängers, the new Irish production outfit that teams the writer-director Lee Cronin with John Keville and Macdara Kelleher of Dublin-based Wild Atlantic Pictures.
Days after Cillian Murphy took home his Oscar, Doppelgängers announced the signing of a first-look deal with the US-based New Line Cinema for feature film projects. The success of Cronin’s horror movie Evil Dead Rise last year — which grossed almost $150 million worldwide from a $20 million budget — certainly helped but discussions with New Line, a subsidiary of Warner Bros Pictures, had been taking place for some time.
“Everything takes longer than people think,” Cronin says from Los Angeles, where he lives part of the time. “The genesis and the birth of Doppelgängers occurred even before those negotiations started.
“I’m something of a lone shark, yet I have great affiliations with people and with my partners. I thought we should formalise that and have a new company solely focused on the type of movies I want to direct and write, obviously, but also produce. That thought process really chimed with the executives I work with inside Warner Bros and New Line Cinema, and they wanted to be supportive of what we were doing.
“We’re excited now to get started and get some movies made. For all of the excitement of this business, it still comes down to having stories you want to tell and to bring them to the big screen as soon as you can.”
Following a series of short films, beginning in 2004 with the mockumentary Wilbur & Anto, and a slate of commercial corporate work, Cronin came to mainstream prominence in 2019 with The Hole in the Ground, an atmospheric Irish horror movie starring Seána Kerslake.
That film was a slow-burning genre success that was eventually seen by the US director Sam Raimi, who in 1979 created the Evil Dead movie franchise. At a meeting in a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, Raimi made Cronin an offer he couldn’t refuse: the opportunity to direct and write the next episode in the series.
From the release and subsequent impressive success of Evil Dead Rise, Cronin has had to spread himself between Dublin and LA “as much as possible, because a huge chunk of the work that I’m doing and the business that I have is working with some great people over here”.
Cronin says one of the main factors in securing the deal with New Line was Doppelgängers’ nose for a good story and an intuitive understanding of what can connect with an audience. Evil Dead Rise, he adds, is a cinematic rollercoaster ride, “a collective movie experience, but that’s not to say everything Doppelgängers looks at needs to be like that”.
He adds: “We’re interested across the spectrum of genre, from sci-fi, action or even touching into some comedy. We’re not going to be doing a straight-up drama — not that we don’t love them and don’t love watching them — and we’re probably not going to do any romcoms.
“We are, however, always going to judge something first and foremost by asking if it is a good story — and can we help bring that story to the big screen? That’s what we’re focused on.”
The deal with New Line is, of course, a good news story for Irish cinema, already surfing the wave of critical acclaim for Murphy’s star turn in Oppenheimer. Cronin argues it would be a cliché to say the doors of the US movie industry will open even wider for Ireland — but only because it has been happening for some time.
Things have changed since the Eighties and Nineties, he claims, when Hollywood arrived in Ireland and made movies such as Far and Away, Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan.
“I think there’s a lot more happening in Ireland than people might realise, because movies are starting to get shot in Ireland that aren’t necessarily set there.”
Being a writer-director and now a producer, is there an obligation on Cronin to use Irish actors for any future Doppelgängers projects?
“I don’t feel any pressure,” he says. “I just feel lucky there is amazing talent that already exists in Ireland both in front and behind the camera.
“This is a great job, you get to travel loads, but I also love being at home, so part of my ambition is to be able to ensure that some part or a huge part of these movies can happen in Ireland.
“I can’t talk about any project specifically yet, but one of my first under this new company is an Irish horror movie set in Ireland that will call for a lot of Irish talent both in front and behind the camera. That’s something I want to do.”
He adds: “It’s incredible when you think about the size of the country that we have so many amazing people. I don’t even want to start naming names because I’ll just forget some of them, but it’s phenomenal we are now at the point where, year on year, Irish talent is getting serious attention.”
As will, surely, forthcoming projects from Doppelgängers. At its centre is Cronin’s motivation — “the romance of it all and what it means to people, how you can form a bond through entertainment, and something that you love to return to and love to watch” — and his full diary.
For the past few years, there hasn’t been any need to search for work. In May 2017, he started preparing The Hole in the Ground, and he hasn’t been twiddling his thumbs since. If anything, he says, he needs to start scheduling “a few more days off and breaks here and there”.
Cronin is that rare thing, his Doppelgängers partners Keville and Kelleher have said: a genre auteur with a proven track record. They say that Doppelgängers is built “around his vision”, but Cronin doesn’t necessarily see it like that.
“The joy is having these great partners, so it’s not just about me at all, it’s about the three of us and the work we can do,” he says.
“Real success for us over the course of the next two or three years would be if we can get two or three projects realised. One a year would be an incredible hit rate, and that’s our aim.”
Already, the production company has “projects that are bubbling and boiling, that we’re excited by. We’re wide open now and looking around”.
He adds: “Even in the course of the last few days, from when we announced the deal with New Line Cinema, we have people engaging with us and wanting to talk about what they’re trying to do. In a sense, we’re just trying to focus and hope that we make the right choices, find the right projects, and then deliver them to the best of our ability.”
