In Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) is sick of being taken advantage of by his mortgage broker and takes his son Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage, wiring a shotgun to the back of his head as he communicates his demands and looks ahead to wiping his slate clean.
Awards Buzz spoke with Van Sant about how much he felt like the characters in the film should mimic reality:
“When it’s a character that’s lesser-known, I’m not very concerned with how accurately your physical likeness is portraying the exact same thing. It’s harder when you get to people who are very well-known. I haven’t really done a film, maybe partly because of that, if you’re casting John Lennon or if you’re casting JFK, it starts to become difficult, because you know the characters so well that you’re caught a little bit, at least I am. Though I have tried to do some projects that did include characters that were so well-known that you wanted to mimic them, although it’s ultimately just a fictional universe for me, even when telling a true story. And I think Bill had that thought too. He was really tall. Even if people are tall, you don’t really notice so much – or short. The camera is trying to shoot them in a flattering way and it does a lot of the work. A lot of actors are known as very short people and we’ve never really noticed because it’s just not how the camera deals with things. His tallness was not an issue for me, although I think Tony may have a Napoleonic complex, we weren’t able to really have that be a characteristic.”
Watch the video above to hear him reflect on his past projects, including the TV series Boss, and the chance to work with terrific collaborators along the way.
Dead Man’s Wire will open in select theaters January 9, 2026, and wide January 16, 2026, with an awards qualifying run December 12, 2025.
