Cosmic Sin, out through VOD on March 12, is a new sci-fi adventure starring Frank Grillo and Bruce Willis. In the far future, humanity has begun colonizing space. Upon making first contact with a previously unknown alien race, they decide they must also launch the first strike.
Writer-director Edward Drake spoke to Screen Rant about collaborating with actors like Willis and Grillo, understanding that aliens aren’t always the bad guys, and imagining future stories told in this universe.
Edward, talk to me about what inspired this story.
Edward Drake: Cosmic Sin honestly came out of the deep desire to look at what a first contact would really look like when you take this very militaristic society, and try and flip a couple of conventions on their head and subvert what the audience is expecting by having the bad guys be the humans for once. I haven’t seen that before, so I thought was really interesting.
Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Hyperion Starship Troopers, and Annihilation. Can you talk to me about how some of these helped inform the work on Cosmic Sin?
Edward Drake: Yeah, absolutely. Annihilation is a movie that is so dramatically underrated. Have you seen it? It’s incredible. If you go back to the Vandermeer’s original text, it’s such a great adaptation of the themes. Because it’s not a very faithful adaptation narrative-wise, but it does get to the root of what Vandermeer was talking about.
I always think that the concepts behind sci-fi are just as interesting as the story. I loved how Interstellar got people thinking. Things like that always amaze me.
Who is the Blood General James Ford? Talk to me about him.
Edward Drake: The Blood General Mr. James Ford is a disgraced soldier who did what he thought needed to be done in a previous conflict before the events of Cosmic Sin start. He’s the one guy that gets it done, no matter what the cost is.
Can you talk to me about Frank Grillo as General Ryle, and what he brought to the role?
Edward Drake: A lot. Frank’s awesome. I’ll work with Frank any day of the week. There’s some bullshit stories out there, but he’s a G. He is so singularly focused on just crushing it, and asking everyone else in the scene to lift their game.
His approach to General Ryle was that same fixated intensity, where whatever Frank does in his life, he’s going to do it to the best of his ability. And that’s the same with General Ryle. I think that’s why the character spoke to him.
I’m a big fan of Adelaide Kane, dating all the way back to Power Rangers. What did she bring to the role of Fiona that wasn’t necessarily on the page? Because that’s actually a pretty hard role to hit the way she did.
Edward Drake: Yeah, and she only had three days of preparation. Adelaide was actually cast as Braxton’s girlfriend, and that role was tiny. It was literally 4/8ths of a page. When I found out that Adelaide wanted to do it, I pulled up a quickie rewrite. I was like, “Amazing, you’re so much better than this. Let’s crush it. Let’s do an awesome job with this one.” She stepped up and came through.
There was a lot that we shot which, unfortunately, I don’t think made the final cut. But she was really supposed to be the heart that was balancing out humanity’s desire to launch this preemptive strike. She was supposed to be looking at the ethical consequences a lot more. But Adelaide’s a very empathetic person, and she’s a great actress.
You’re a frequent collaborator with Bruce Willis. Can you talk about his presence on set and how that benefited everything else, and also the collaboration process of working with him?
Edward Drake: Yeah. Look, I’ve never had a bad day with Bruce. He’s the chillest superstar on the face of the Earth. I was backpacking through India, and nobody could speak any English, but they knew three names. They knew Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. But when you have that much superstardom around you? He just comes in, and he’s the most humble, down-to-earth nice guy. He’s so chill. Just talks about his kids and Idaho; we have a chat.
He is a huge sci-fi nerd as well. Massive. Oh my God, he’s turned me on to so many great books. He’s really cheeky as well. He loves to f*** with people. When we first put the Cosmic Sin suit on him, he was like a kid again. He was shadowboxing and chasing everyone around and thumping his chest. It was fantastic. It was a good moment for everyone, because we were like, “Yeah, this is cool.”
I actually want to talk the Icarus suit. It is beautiful to look at that thing is awesome. Can you talk to me about what went into that suit, and is it movable?
Edward Drake: Oh, absolutely. They’re full-functioning, and you do need two people to help you get in them. In the film, when they’re getting suited up, we actually show the hex team putting it on Ryle and some of the other ones, which I think was a nice little touch. But yeah, that’s Josh, Tony Lee, and Rick over at Hex Mortis. They’re awesome.
It was funny, because I was in a really bad mood the day that I was supposed to go see those suits for the first time. Because we’d been going back and forth on the concept art, and I hadn’t met the Hex guys before. I pull up, and everything’s on fire. I’m just like, “Alright, let’s just get this done. Let’s just see what it is.” I walk into that shop, and there’s a suit in the middle of the show room. I was like, “That’s awesome. I wish we had that.” And then Josh just turns to me, “Well, brother. That one’s yours.” That completely turned my day around.
Did you have any input on the design of the suit, or was it hands off?
Edward Drake: That was totally a Hex Mortis creation. I came in for some character stuff, to try and make the suits a little singular to each person. But yeah, it was funny. Frank Grillo was supposed to be in one of the white suits. As soon as he walked on set, he’s like, “I’m having that black one. That’s fine. That looks cool as fuck; that’s on me.”
I’m also a big WWE fan. You cast C.J. Perry, who a lot of WWE fans know as Lana. How did that casting come about?
Edward Drake: She used to go to an acting school with a friend of the production, Johnny Messner. And I wrote the Sol Cantos character, we just couldn’t find anyone cool, to be honest. C.J. had been on lists for quite a while, and the role was written for a man, but we changed the pronouns and then there we go. She crushed it, and she had so much fun. She was awesome to work with.
You shot on the new Sony Venice cameras. How did that enhance the color and the look of the film? Because the film is gorgeous, almost like this picturesque future that’s coming to life at you.
Edward Drake: Yeah, totally. The Venice is a really powerful little camera. Snowfall on FX really champions the look, so when we were trying to create this 80s throwback vintage feel to it, we also needed to have that modern energy. There’s a really good grain texture that comes out with their sensors.
Our cinematographer Brandon Cox, he did Cutthroat City and a bunch of other great films, [said when] we were talking about the Alexa, “Well, have you considered the Venice?” And I was like, “I haven’t seen too much that’s been shot on it.” We did a quick camera test, and I was like, “This will do.” It was cool.
Talk to me about the about the aliens themselves, because it’s unlike what we’ve seen before. What was the thought process of creating those aliens?
Edward Drake: Yeah, the one thing I love about Stargate is that they were so thought out with how they presented alien civilizations that they were coming into contact with. For all the thought that went into creating this modern future for humanity, I doubled that down for, “What does society look like to these aliens? What is their music? Is it tribal? Is it a kingdom, or is it a republic?” That sort of thing.
We wanted to go for a more zealot kind of feel, where their culture is war. They’re a reflection of humanity’s desire to be the apex race, quote-unquote. Such to the point that they’ve evolved to a place where they can consume other species and bring them in, that sort of thing. That was really driving a lot of the design.
The world seems extremely fleshed out. Do you have any thoughts about creating anything beyond Cosmic Sin to play more in the sandbox of the world that you created?
Edward Drake: Yeah. They hired me to write a sequel. Fun fact: this was actually supposed to be the sequel to Breach. Three weeks before production, they said, “Yeah, we want this to be a standalone thing.” I was like, “Okay, back to the writing.”
It is funny that this is started its life as a sequel to something else, but now people are asking for the Cosmic Sins equal. I turned that draft in; it’s called Fallen Sun. It’s really cool. It’s about a colony of [aliens] that survived, and they’re heading towards a relic. It’s a race against time, because if they can get to that relic before the humans, then it’s game over for the universe as we know it.
You were talking about Stargate earlier and some of the influences there. What other influences did you draw from?
Edward Drake: A twisted, demented version of Star Trek. What does the Federation look like? I thought it was great in season one of Star Trek: Discovery, when they go to the Mirror Universe. I thought that was so brilliantly rendered – hats off to them.
But yeah, just trying to draw from a little bit of Star Wars, too. You want that Empire Strikes Back feel. You can’t help it; all of the influences just feed into what you create. You’ve got to be open to it.
The sci-fi genre sometimes can be used as a cautionary tale, which we talked about a little bit, and seen colonization happen in our own history. Can you talk to me about how the film speaks to that?
Edward Drake: Absolutely. It’s really at the heart of it, looking at cultural Eurasia, and something that we still see going on today. It’s even amplified with the advances in social media. If I can Trojan horse some interesting themes into a film, I will absolutely always go for it.
It’s been a lot of fun. The feedback has been pretty positive; everyone’s understanding that the humans in this film aren’t the good guys. There’s a lot of people out there in the world that we live in that aren’t trying to be good either. So hopefully, it gives people a healthy amount of skepticism for how they go about reading and digesting everything that they see on social media.
Cosmic Sin is now available on VOD.
