You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is my interview with the director

and writer for A Quiet Place Day 1, Michael Sarnaski.

Michael, great to see you again.

A couple of years now since your feature debut with Haig, what a leap to take here with Applied Place Day 1.

I want to ask first to start off here.

Taking over the reins from John Cresensky, who has a story credit, produced a film as well.

Is it easier to jump into a world that's already been established, or does that put more pressure on you to continue what was originally started?

It's a little bit of both, but I think at the end of the day, my into it was very much

through character and through Sam.

So kind of world or not, I just wanted to do justice to that character. So yeah, there's expectations and there are certain rules you have to follow, which in some ways give you guidance, in some ways limit you. But I think it was kind of an even split and mostly it was just, any anytime you you have a character that you want

to explore you have to think about what world they live in in this case i just had a little more

already established that i had to play with so it was it was fun in some ways challenging in others but

i loved it what was the best piece of advice you got from john right before you started would you

say i think it was he was very gracious and just kind of saying, hey, make this your own. Like, I didn't feel this pressure to, you know, oh, you've got to do justice to the old ones and make it feel like that or anything like that. It's just, hey, make this a Michael Sarnaski movie and have fun with it. And that really took a lot of weight off of me and was just really generous of him.

Two films in right now, very different types of films just in terms of scale.

What would you say is a Michael Sarnowski film right now?

I don't know. It's far too early to say.

Certainly they seem to have a lot of animals in them.

But other than that, I mean, I think a Michael Sarnowski film

is just a film that I care about and enjoy making,

and it seems like they tend to be character-driven,

hopefully surprisingly emotional stories in the context of something

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