SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers about the entire plot of “Companion,” now playing in theaters.
The sci-fi horror film “Companion” has charmed critics and audiences alike on its opening weekend. The twisty thriller has many surprises in store — especially during the third act — which demand post-screening analysis. Luckily, Variety asked writer-director Drew Hancock to break down the film’s final minutes, while sharing his idea for a potential sequel.
To summarize the film, a young couple — Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) — is on a trip with friends when Iris is nearly raped by another man, Sergey (played by Rupert Friend). This leads Iris to learn that she is not human but rather a robot girlfriend — Josh’s literal property. She also finds out that Josh and some members of the friend group were planning to rob millions from Sergey’s safe and accuse her of everything. For the rest of the movie, Iris tries to escape Josh and find her agency. In the end, Iris has a battle with Josh and betters him by stabbing him in the head with an electronic wine opener. Although some of her flesh was burned off earlier in the film, leaving an exposed robot arm, she takes a car and the stolen money and travels into the great unknown.
Hancock broke down his unique writing method while describing how he created the ending of “Companion.”
“So the way I write is I typically don’t outline the entire movie, but I need to outline like the first half at least,” he says. “I need to have a road map of half the journey. I’ve written enough to know that endings always change and you always figure out a third act as you write. So you’re wasting your time spinning your wheels if you think you have the ending as you start, because once you start writing and figure out these characters’ voices, how they talk and how they interact, there’s something magical about finding a new way to tie this all together as you’re discovering the story.
“So I knew that there was probably going to be some kind of final confrontation,” he continues. “I knew Jack would be the last man standing, and Iris would win. I didn’t know the mechanics of that. So I had a finely detailed outline for the first half, and then I had a rough, ‘Maybe it goes here, maybe it does this, maybe we end here?’ And I wrote half of the movie, then I just told myself, ‘OK, you can’t write anything else. Stop, and let’s outline the second half using the ingredients of everything that’s been set up now.’
“I spent a month just cracking that third act, just to make sure I was writing towards something,” he continues. “I do find that there are these stream-of-consciousness movies that feel like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what direction this movie is going, because I feel like the writer is probably also kind of making up as they go along.’ They’re really fun, but then you get to the third act, and you get to a point where, you’re like, ‘OK, you didn’t know how you were gonna tie this all up, so you just slapped something together.’ I wanted the end to have intentionality to it and feel satisfying, so I spent a month cracking that. Then I said, “OK, you can open up that Final Draft file, pick up where you left off and finish it.’”
Hancock also explained the mid-credits scene, in which Iris waves to another version of herself using her robot hand, leaving the other Iris confused and the Iris we know smiling.
“I wanted to give a tease just to build the world a little bit more,” he says. “We haven’t set up before how finely … Are these cut-out characters? Are there five faces to choose from? Or was Josh able to construct a woman from scratch? This is letting people know there are probably thousands and thousands and thousands of robots out there that have Iris’ face. This is the beginning of maybe … I didn’t want it to be like a robot revolution, because I don’t want to tell that story, but this is the beginning of a story that could get bigger.”
Although Hancock is already busy on his next big project, given it was announced this week he signed on to write a reboot of “The Faculty,” he does have ideas about what a sequel to “Companion” could look like.
“I have little seeds of ideas,” he says. “I think, ‘OK, that’d be cool … What does she see when she’s put to sleep? Because she’s going to have to have rest mode at some point. Is she living in that grocery store and there’s a meet cute every time she’s put to sleep? Maybe that’s a way to bring back Jack’s character.’ Just little ideas like that.
“Story-wise, because I feel like I’ve told my version of the story, I’d like to just step back and do the ‘Alien’ / ‘Aliens’ kind of thing and bring someone else in,” he continues. “‘Where do you see this going?’ If I had my druthers, if I made the sequel to ‘Companion,’ it would just be a shot of her on the side of the road, cutting out her tracking chip and then cutting to her on a farm with a couple of million dollars. You just see her gardening and making a meal, and throwing that meal out because she can’t enjoy it. But she’s doing all these very human things: Watching a sunset with a glass of wine, but not being able to drink it, and just scenes like that for two hours. That’s the future I want for Iris. I want her just to enjoy the sunset. That’s it.
“I understand that Warner Bros. probably wouldn’t be interested in that version,” he continues, laughing. “So I’m not gonna push it. But I’d be very interested to see a new take on the story without being like ‘Westworld.’ I’m not interested in knowing more about Empathix. I’d be more interested in finding out where Iris goes and how she survives. I mean, she’s living 15 years in the future and driving in a gas-powered car. She’s going to run out of gas. There aren’t gas stations, I’m sure, in 15 years. So she’s going to be immediately met with obstacles which can be fun to play around with.”
