Welcome to It’s a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big.
For films as technically accomplished and thematically ambitious as “Rebel Ridge,” it can seem narrow-minded when people only want to talk about the the cast — it can, but not this time. One reason why not is because Jeremy Saulnier’s 2024 action-thriller is led by Aaron Pierre, the “Underground Railroad” breakout who ascended to the next level of stardom via last fall’s back-to-back blockbusters, “Rebel Ridge” and “Mufasa.” “Rebel Ridge,” which premiered first, felt like the start of something, and the start of something never feels narrow.
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But another reason is because casting is integral to this particular project in ways both fateful and frustrating, rare and rewarding.
“I found that Netflix was the best partner out there when it comes to casting,” Saulnier said in an interview with IndieWire. “They weren’t the brick wall of foreign sales shortlists that just about everybody else out there were. For both my films, ‘Hold the Dark’ and ‘Rebel Ridge,’ I found a home there because of their ability to trust me as a filmmaker and to allow me a much wider berth when it comes to casting.”
A cold fact of the entertainment business is that some movies only get the chance to exist once a marketable star signs on; without the commercial appeal of an actor who’s also a reliable box office draw, studios get cold feet and either cut the budget or back out entirely.
“Filmmakers will lament across the board [that] there’s a short list of people that get foreign sales accommodated very easily, and it’s based on great actors and past success, but it’s not very inventive,” Saulnier said. “It’s not forward-looking, and after a while it’s so limiting — it becomes very frustrating to go up against it every single time you make a movie.”
Frustrations weren’t hard to come by during the six years Saulnier spent working on “Rebel Ridge.” Saulnier started writing the script in 2018. Cameras were ready to roll in April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Hollywood. They started up in May 2021 but stopped again when the original lead, John Boyega, dropped out one month into production. Once Pierre joined, shooting started in April 2022 and ran through July, before it was released on Netflix two years later, in September 2024.
Now, after becoming a critical and commercial smash, it’s time for a victory lap.
“Everything ended up — after a very long journey to get this to screen — just perfectly,” Saulnier said. “I don’t know how or why, the fates were in control, but I can tie it back to Netflix’s faith in me as a filmmaker and their willingness to take risks that other studios will not take. And that is how the fuck Aaron Pierre ended up in this budget movie as a first-time, No. 1-on-the-call-sheet, action-movie helmer.”
Below, the director discusses the moment he knew “Rebel Ridge” — and Aaron Pierre — were bigger than a “virtual” hit and what it means to be in the Emmy race for Outstanding TV Movie: “I certainly didn’t intend to put that stamp on this film. … But there’s also some benefits to being in this category.”
The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.
IndieWire: I assume, at some point, you had to pitch “Rebel Ridge” to Netflix. What did that look like?
Jeremy Saulnier: Matt Levin, who’s no longer with Netflix, was our executive on “Hold the Dark,” and I considered him a friend. There was a great rapport between us professionally, and I don’t actually recall pitching the script. It was sort of an effortless continuation of our past dialogue with our previous film.
I did think that “Hold the Dark” was such a bold swing for any studio. It’s a literary adaptation. It’s stark, it’s cold to the bone, it’s beautifully odd. And this is back before people shared the internal numbers, but it did over-index for what it was.
Part of the continuity — and you could say it was a sales pitch — was, “Hey, let’s run it back. But I have to have something much more commercial this time around, much more accessible and more traditionally satisfying as a narrative.” So I appreciate the trust they put in me for “Hold the Dark,” and I kind of wanted to have it pay off in a bigger way for that studio who took a chance on me.
Was there a moment in writing the script where you really feel like you had something? Where you could see your vision coming through?
Writing, it’s so fun, there’s no constraints. It’s unbridled creativity, but a lot of it is mathematical unlocking of certain puzzle pieces and how do you make the Tetris work. It is such a great payoff when you solve anything as it relates to, “How do we get to the finish line?” So I do remember cracking the ending and being very excited about going back through the script and making sure it was engineered properly to lead us to that point. Then you feel safe, and it’s all about tweaking, massaging, dialogue work, and trimming.
So that felt like a huge success, and it was born out of research — just digging in, finding out more about the technical things, from the legalese that these characters speak to how a dash-cam DVR actually works. All these things came into play, and when I had that eureka moment, it was very satisfying. But you never know— well, personally, I never know anything about success that might be measured in the writing phase.
What about when you got into production?
There was a moment — and again, this isn’t a success measured by how it will do out in the world and how critics will respond to it. But just as far as like, “Holy shit, this is really engaging and I’ve been on this film for so many years that if I’m engaged live on set, I have high hopes for how this will translate through to an audience” — it was scene 28 actually, or 27 and 28.
To set the stage, “Rebel Ridge” is very technical. The sell was we’re going to do our very best to make unspectacular action have a higher emotional impact than anything you’ve seen in years. And so a lot of it is specificity — shot design, very technical work. A very important scene where Terry Richmond, played by Aaron Pierre, rolls up to the police station to confront Chief Sandy Burnne, played by Don Johnson, had so much potential. By design, I orchestrated that to be very simple from a filmmaking perspective. We spent a lot of time building tension and finally here these two guys are, so I just sat back and stripped away all the fancy filmmaking and picked a single lens per guy and let them do the work. It wasn’t about smoke or dolly movement or techno cranes, it was just them.
It’s an eight-page dialogue scene, and we had nailed it before lunch. Everyone on set could just feel the gravity between them, and that was the center of the movie. That would help propel the narrative until the very end. That felt very special. And again, you can read the crew. They’re your first audience, and that’s when I knew we had something special.
You mentioned not knowing when or if a movie might work while you’re making it, but there must have been a moment once it released when you knew people were really responding to it.
I don’t know what paved the way exactly, but there wasn’t much on the platform that was new when we were released. So it was a really good window for us. Our trailer had done really well online. We were given a good push, but it [came out] September 6, a Friday, and by Sunday we could tell from all the email chatter it was doing really well. It hit No. 1, but a lot of films do for a bit. We didn’t know what the staying power was, but my wife and I were having a ball.
It’s almost like sports — you’re sitting at home observing data, you’re checking the aggregate tracking from various websites, and awareness shot up from near nothing to No. 1 across the world. This is not just within the platform, this is other tracking websites, but again, we’re new to this. We felt something online — the reaction was substantial. It was a lot of conversation back and forth, a lot of support, a lot of controversy, most of that fabricated, and we could tell it was catching fire culturally — in a virtual space.
The next weekend, Aaron Pierre and I were invited to the UFC fights at the Sphere. Now, I’m not the one to start talking about what I do for a living or the industry at all. I need breaks. But I got in the car [to go to the airport] and the driver struck up a conversation. We got to “Rebel Ridge,” and he had just seen it and was really excited and maybe he could meet Aaron Pierre at the airport. It wasn’t like a bunch of industry feedback. It was every valet, every bartender, the people on the floor of the casino, they were all just clocking Aaron Pierre, who just weeks before certainly wasn’t that much of a blip on anyone’s radar.
I tell people I was there to witness Aaron Pierre become a major star because I was walking about 12 feet behind him, and he’s a very modest gentleman. He had sunglasses on, not trying to capture anyone’s attention, but despite his efforts to go incognito, everybody — and I mean literally a third of the entire Las Vegas community — was sitting there looking at him and talking about him and just showering him with honest praise. We got back in the car, and we’re like, “Holy shit, what just happened?”
That’s the reach that Netflix had. In one week, everyone we encountered had seen it. I’ll never forget that: just watching a star being born before my very eyes. It felt like success went from virtual to very, very real. I’ve never had that sort of impact before. I have made films and they have had their fanbase, but nothing that impacted culture like “Rebel Ridge.”
One of the reasons we’re talking is because “Rebel Ridge” is going to be submitted at the Emmys. It’s going to be considered for Outstanding TV Movie, as well as these other categories that go along with it. What do you think of when you hear that term, TV Movie? Does that mean something different to you?
I think we’re in a transitional phase right now, and I certainly didn’t intend to put that stamp on this film. But also throughout my theatrical film career, I’ve done — back in ’07 — straight to video; not to streaming, straight to video. I’ve done day-and-date — released on streaming the same day as it was released in theaters — and I’ve done a platform theatrical release. So I’ve done everything, and I really don’t focus on how it’s categorized, whether it be awards contention or a genre.
As long as I can maintain the integrity of the movie itself, I do at some point have to just fall back and let distributors distribute the film as they will. If we get celebrated for our work, it doesn’t matter what category it’s in — it’s just great, especially for the cast, to get certain amounts of recognition. So I definitely fight very hard to make films how I envision them when I sit at the writer’s table and conjure them up. But at a certain point, you have to let the pros do what they do and attend whatever dinners you’re allowed in and take a victory lap. But there’s also some benefits to being in this category. We’ve done quite well.
I also look at awards season, which seems never-ending, as a way to keep great movies and shows in the cultural conversation. There are so many stories out there, any way to give the best of them a little more time in the spotlight is a good thing.
In the Saulnier family, we’re very excited because there’s currently several “Rebel Ridge” billboards in Los Angeles, and sometimes when daddy’s away for years or months at a time, it’s hard for the kiddos to really understand what I do. But nothing drives it home more when you pass a billboard and see Aaron Pierre there and you can say, “That’s Daddy’s movie.” It’s very special. So, yeah, having this extra lap 10 months after the release is really cool. There’s a lot of lasting power in this film, which sets it apart, and that’s certainly something that we’re all very excited about.
So, what’s next?
I definitely have something cooking, but yeah, there’s no official details released. Hard at work for something hopefully to make this year.
“Rebel Ridge” is available on Netflix.
