Freaky Tales directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden spoke with The Direct's Russ Milheim about the movie's insane cast and reminding the world that Nazis are no good.
The movie is an anthology film that follows a colorful set of characters in 1987 Oakland, CA, with its multiple storylines weaving in and out of each other in fun and interesting ways.
Freaky Tales' stacked cast includes iconic names such as Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Dominique Thorne (who The Direct has spoken to in the past), Tom Hanks, Angus Cloud, and more.
Freaky Tales Directors Talk Beating Up Nazis With a Stacked Cast
"It's More Relevant Than We Ever Wanted It to Be."
- The Direct: "The first thing I wanted to talk about, though, is just, seeing a bunch of people beat up Nazis feels very cathartic given today's society and its problems. How would you say that not only that story, but just this collection of zany stories that, even though it's in the 1980s, how does it remain relevant to the world that we live in?"
Ryan Fleck: It's more relevant than we ever wanted it to be. We're set in 1987, we have a character played by Normani who says, you know, 'It's 1987, you think people would know by now that it's not cool to be a Nazi these days,' but no.
And then, when we wrote this in 2020, it was like, 'Okay, we're going to be able to move past this and still reflect on that crazy couple of years we had.' But here we are again, 2025 and people still need reminding.
Anna Boden: It's nice to be able to, I think, spend a couple of hours in this movie and watch the underdogs kick the bullies behind for a change.
- The Direct: "The film is absolutely filled with an insane cast. Can you talk about how you managed to get such an incredible list of talent and how they were able to contribute to the project themselves, past their own performances?"
Ryan Fleck: I mean, look, a lot of it is timing and luck. You know, we got lucky. Pedro Pascal, we really liked, but The Last of Us,' hadn't come out yet, so he wasn't like this colossal movie star that he is now. He was just a good actor and a good dude that was right for the role. So that's just great timing on that one.
Tom Hanks is in the movie because we did some episodes of the WWII drama 'Masters of the Air' that he produced, and he's from Oakland, and we actually wrote him into the script, into the musical section of the script is just appearing in a little cameo. And we gave him the script. He was like, Oh, this is great. I'll do that.
And so we were kind of like, 'Oh, is he really going to do this?' And if he is, are we really taking advantage of Tom Hanks being in this movie? So we actually wrote that scene in the video store specifically for Tom once it looked like he was actually going to come join us in Oakland. And so we had a lot of fun with that one.
Anna Boden: And he hates Nazis too.
- The Direct: "Obviously, this is an anthology film, and one film that I thought of just while watching it was Trick r' Treat. I don't know if you guys have seen that, but what were some of your favorite anthology films, and what were the biggest inspirations behind this film?"
Ryan Fleck: Yeah, I mean, for me, I grew up loving 'Creepshow,' which was fantastic. What's different about ours is, ours leans a little more pulp fiction in the sense that the characters interact with each other.
They're not pure anthology where the stories are, like standalone in their entirety, the Jim Jarmusch movies I was always a big fan of, you know, like 'Mystery Train,' and 'Night on Earth,' you know, I love those. Yeah, of course, you've got Altman 'Shortcuts in Nashville.'
Those movies are a little different in terms of, like, they keep circling around each other throughout the entire movie, right, as opposed each individualized story. But yeah, there's a lot of them I loved growing up.
The full video interview can be viewed here:
Freaky Tales hits theaters on April 4, 2025. Read more about what Lionsgate recently revealed at CinemaCon!
