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Writer: Captive State. Erica Beeney is known for Captive State (2019), Charlie Melody and The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003).
- Writer, Additional Crew, Director
- Erica Beeney
Mar 14, 2019 · Erica Beeney—who rose to national fame for winning HBO’s Project Greenlight with her screenplay for The Battle of Shaker Heights—co-wrote this realistic sci-fi drama with the film’s director (and her husband) Rupert Wyatt.
Mar 25, 2013 · What's Up With... Erica Beeney. By Pamela Bock | Last Updated: March 25, 2013. Where You've Seen Her: The Ohio State University M.F.A. graduate had a quick rise to fame as the winner of the...
Mar 14, 2019 · We interview Captive State director Rupert Wyatt and co-writer Erica Beeney about the film's real-world parallels and the Fox/Disney deal.
- Migdalia Melendez
- Captive State hits theaters on March 15 in the US and March 29 in the UK.
- Captive State Gallery
By Terri Schwartz
Updated: Mar 15, 2019 7:36 pm
Posted: Mar 15, 2019 12:05 am
There have been countless different approaches to the alien invasion story, from sci-fi epics like Independence Day and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to more personal cultural and political commentaries like USA's Colony. Director Rupert Wyatt, perhaps best known for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes, opted for the latter with his new film Captive State, which is set in Chicago nearly a decade after militarized aliens occupied America and tells the story of both those who are for and against the extra-terrestrial forces.
Wyatt, who co-wrote the story with his wife Erica Beeney, knew they wanted to tell a more modern, timely story through the lens of science fiction. The origin of Captive State was the idea of exploring the stories both the collaborators and dissidents on both sides of an occupied state. But Wyatt and Beeney opted not to go the route of a historical drama (which, coincidentally, he already directed in the pilot of AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies) and instead looked to the near future and "create this idea of we're putting a documentary film crew into the future and we're under occupation by an alien life form."
If you haven't already, watch the trailer for Captive State below:
At the end of the day, though, this is an alien story -- which means, yes, you will see some aliens. Referring to whether or not to reveal what their extra-terrestrials look like as "the Jaws question," Wyatt once again went back to real-life circumstances to try to figure out what made the most sense for this movie. Originally, his team didn't want to put a face to Captive State's occupier, but realized once they got to the editing process that showing the invaders was necessary to show what the humans are up against. The aliens in this movie are only revealed at a few very effective moments, which borrowed from the concept that, for "an Iraqi civilian in Baghdad in 2004 ... it'd be very rare they might ever see [a US soldier] pass through a street in convoy, or coming through their door at 3 o'clock in the morning. But other than that, the coalition would be sequestered and sort of not part of everyday life."
If you do walk out of Captive State hoping for a sequel, don't worry, Wyatt has already started thinking about what comes next. Even though Captive State is designed as a standalone story, it leaves the door open to future installments of this potentially budding franchise -- and, Wyatt confirms, there have been "conversations" about doing exactly that.
"[Captive State] has a very finite ending to it that brings to a resolution the greater goal of a particular character. ... [But] it's interesting because this in some ways, has aspects of longer-form storytelling; there are multiple characters, there's the hyper-narrative," Wyatt said. "I think some of the characters that survive our story would go into the more global conflicts between humans and aliens -- like, this is the Arab Spring and we'll then go tell the story of the actual militarized fight-back. And then, the final film could possibly go off planet. They came obviously, from a carbon-based planet and they've colonized other planets along the way and so, being able to go and explore that would be great."
For more on IGN, be sure to check out IGN's review of Captive State below. Let us know what you think of the movie in the comments below!
Erica Beeney is known for Captive State (2019), Charlie Melody and The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003).
Mar 15, 2019 · Captive State director Rupert Wyatt and writer Erica Beeney reveal how the sci-fi thriller was made, how it changed in the editing room, and casting John Goodman.
