Every year, Steven Soderbergh releases a day-by-day breakdown of the films, TV shows, and books he’s worked on, in addition to breaking down what days he’s in production on whatever project is in the works. Needless to say, it’s an expansive list that shows just how busy Soderbergh must be on a daily basis. Which leads to the obvious question—what the hell has he been up to during quarantine? We already know that he’s working on a sequel to “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” but in a new interview with Indiewire, the filmmaker admits that he’s actually revisiting some of his previous films and re-editing them.
One of the films that he’s re-edited during quarantine is “Kafka,” the director’s second film (and a re-editing project that dates back years) that hasn’t necessarily become as beloved as he might have hoped when it was released. However, the new version of the film is “pretty radically different, something else entirely,” according to Soderbergh.
But for two other films, “Schizopolis” and “Full Frontal,” Soderbergh admits that the extent of his re-editing was just trimming the run-times and said, “They’re just shorter.”
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Though the filmmaker is clearly one of the busiest (and prolific) creators in Hollywood, sometimes releasing more than one film in any given year, Soderbergh admits that the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has provided him time to really focus on writing, which has definitely helped his productivity.
“I’ve gotten a lot of stuff off my plate that wouldn’t have been completed if it were not for the pandemic,” he admitted.
However, it almost goes without saying that the pandemic hasn’t been a great time outside of the productivity for Soderbergh. Obviously, as with every filmmaker, the big question remains about what the future of the industry will look like post-pandemic. Will productions begin soon, and if so, will they have to change how they operate? Not to mention the question about what the release schedule is going to look like with theaters only just now reopening, with limited capacities.
It’s that latter issue that has affected Soderbergh’s latest project, “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” which he executive produced. Though he wished the film would have been released in theaters, as originally planned, the filmmaker is aware of the current climate and thinks the sequel will do just fine on PVOD.
“It’s also a movie that the whole family can sit down at home, watch, and enjoy that way,” he said. “I’m pretty agnostic about this stuff, but I’m sure I shared some sense of disappointment when it became blatantly obvious that a wide release of the kind we were imagining just was just not possible. Literally.”
“Bill & Ted Face the Music” is set to be released this Friday in select theaters and PVOD.
