Cold Storage is many thrilling things in one singularly entertaining package. It’s a ticking-clock science-fiction epic directed by the award-winning Jonny Campbell, that is based on terrifying science fact and created by an award-winning screenwriter – David Koepp – with considerable form in that genre, as the man who previously adapted Jurassic Park.
As a director, Jonny Campbell recently helped resurrect Dracula to global acclaim, and he here delivers another delicious genre fusion, one this time produced by Gavin Polone, of Zombieland fame. As audiences are about to discover, credentials don’t get any more suited to what is soon to unfold, to gruesome and hilarious effect.
The film they’ve unleashed simultaneously delivers a riot of inventive body horror and a flirtatiously budding romance between two of the hottest stars in the industry today. And is loaded with whip-smart dialogue, explosive set-pieces, a murderous mutated cat called Mr. Scroggins and Vanessa Redgrave – yes, that Vanessa Redgrave – packing some serious heat.
“This extraordinarily contagious fungus is brought back from Space, then put underground by the government and forgotten about,” explains Koepp of the plot. “This is the story of the night, two decades later, that a couple of security guards find it in a storage facility [that has been built on top of the old government facility] and it starts to wreak havoc.”
When a highly contagious, mutating fungus escapes a sealed facility, two young employees,
joined by a grizzled bioterror operative, must survive the wildest night shift ever to save
humanity from extinction, as the microorganism spreads and destroys everything in its path.
Starring Joe Keery (Stranger Things), Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), and Liam Neeson (Naked
Gun). From the producer of Zombieland and the screenwriter of Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and
Mission: Impossible, COLD STORAGE is an action-packed thrill ride and pure popcorn fun.
In Jonny Campbell, Polone has found himself working alongside another director with a distinctive vision and a flair for the macabre and mischievous. “Gavin and David had seen Dracula and liked the tone of horror, comedy and gore that we’d created in that,” Jonny Campbell says.
“Cold Storage has an irreverence that’s in the same ballpark. And it has an atmosphere and style that I found terrifically rewarding. Everyone sets out to do something unique, but with this, I really think we have. I’ve always been attracted to the unpredictable and what we’ve achieved has a sheer sense of fun to it that evolves organically.”
Polone, meanwhile, has a strong and successful history with Koepp, having produced three of his films as a director: Koepp’s Stephen King adaptation Secret Window, Premium Rush, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s bike messenger navigated the madness of Koepp’s beloved Manhattan, and the brutally effective ghost picture Stir of Echoes. The producer has also long had a passion for partnering with quality directors and their gripping take on genre stories, as he did with the likes of David Fincher on Panic Room and Ivan Reitman in My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
More than anything, according to its stars, Joe Keery, who played the beloved Steve Harrington in Stranger Things and has since been a standout in the likes of Fargo and Free Guy, and Georgina Campbell, who broke out in the likes of Barbarian and Bird Box: Barcelona, COLD STORAGE represents a uniquely enticing proposition. “It is, I think, a perfect date night movie. A Friday night date night movie,” Keery smiles of the genuine “roller coaster” he promises it will take audiences on. “Maybe the weirdest date night movie ever. Because it is a gross, romantic, hilarious, comedy-horror-thriller. People fall in love and people explode.”
Georgina Campbell grins at Keery’s description, in total agreement. “This is epic,” she says. “It’s really pretty great. We play two people whose desire to keep one-upping each other takes them further and further into God knows what. They uncover a story with some serious stakes.”
Like some of Koepp’s previous high-concept hits, this equally jaw-dropping story takes something rooted in the real world and fashions it into the central conceit of an action-packed, high-concept Hollywood event.
In Steven Spielberg’s prehistoric romp, that concept took the form of dinosaur DNA being unleashed into the modern day. Jonny Campbell’s Cold Storage, which is singularly suited to his multi-genre stylings, having also helmed everything from Westworld to Doctor Who, boasts a threat that is considerably smaller, but even deadlier.
“The premise of Cold Storage is that we learn that a scientific experiment in Space has gone wrong and a parasitic fungus has come back to Earth. It falls upon Liam Neeson’s grizzled bioterror operative and two regular night shift workers [Keery’s Teacake and Georgina Campbell’s Naomi], to save Mankind,” the director says. “It’s called Cold Storage because 20 years ago or so, the military stored this substance deep in an old mine facility, to do research on it. And with climate change and things warming up, this specimen, this new species, buried underground and forgotten about, escapes. It has been, if you like, hibernating – and it comes to life and starts to spread.”
And if all that sounds a little far-fetched, consider this: Koepp didn’t make it up. At least, not entirely. “In some ways this is similar in tone to Jurassic Park, in that the science is very well grounded and very well researched,” says the acclaimed screenwriter, who has here adapted his novel of the same name, which was published to rave reviews in 2019. “I’ve always loved stories that are based in real science – everything that flows from the premise is therefore more believable. I’m drawn to things that are funny at times, horrifying at others, but the real-world premise is still key. On Cold Storage [when I was writing the screenplay], I had the advantage of quite a bit of my own research, from my novel. Knowing exactly when to depart from reality and into fiction, for the sake of your story, is the crucial part.”
Writing The Story
When it came to writing that source novel, Koepp started with a complex manifesto: “I envisioned a story that was equal parts science, horror, humour, and was centred around some very real human characters,” Koepp says. What he didn’t start with was a set plan as to what medium the story would ultimately play out in. Koepp may have wanted to write a novel “for years”, but Cold Storage in fact began its life as a movie concept.
“But for some reason I challenged myself to write 10 pages of prose first, just as a way to get to know the characters a bit,” Koepp remembers. “And after three pages, I thought, ‘Oh, this could be a short story.’ After 30, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a novela.’ And after a hundred pages, I had to admit, ‘This is a novel.’ It was an absolute joy to write.”
When it came to concocting the story, Koepp was inspired by three things: a real-world interstellar disaster, a man he saw on the street one day, and a faulty smoke alarm.
The interstellar disaster was burned into his imagination all the way back on July 11, 1979, the defining day that Skylab crashed back down into our southern hemisphere. NASA’s first space station – and the largest spacecraft ever to fall back to Earth – had been sat vacant since its last crew headed for home in February 1974, leaving the place ready for a follow-up team that was ultimately never sent.
When, thanks to a mix of the Sun’s increased radiation and declining air molecules, Skylab’s orientation changed, it was dragged back down into the Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft tore apart over the Indian Ocean and debris from its vast carcass was spread across the 150 kilometres of sparsely populated Western Australia lying down below.
“Our opening [sequence] is based on those real events. Kiwirrkurra is a real place,” says Jonny Campbell of the most remote community in Australia, that sits some 700km west of Alice Springs and is the location for Cold Storage’s outback-set prologue, in which the intergalactic fungus first drops to Earth and Neeson’s Robert Quinn, alongside his trusted partner, Trinny Romano (Lesley Manville), are sent out to investigate. “When bits of the Skylab fuselage fell [in the real world], people put them outside their houses and tried to make museums out of it, to earn money from tourists,” Jonny Campbell continues. “That is a good starting point for a story… What if something had infiltrated that debris on the way down?”
The man, meanwhile, was a stranger that Koepp observed one morning, going about his day-to-day business. “One of the many reasons I love living in New York is its chance street encounters. You’re immediately thrust into the life of someone unlike you, and if you take a moment to think about them, a whole story might suggest itself,” Koepp says. “In this case, I saw this guy in his mid-twenties, walking down the street, wearing a security guard outfit, and it was a sweltering August morning. He looked, to me, like he was a man on his way home from a job he hated. Who can’t relate to that?” the screenwriter and producer remembers with a smile. “And I thought, ‘I want to make that guy the hero of a movie.’ I love, and I think we all do, the everyman and everywoman character, that is in an extraordinary, extreme situation. [As an audience] we can invest in that situation quickly. That is my absolute favourite kind of movie.”
For Jonny Campbell, the attraction to direct lay in telling a story that would appeal to fans of both of those aspects.
“To find something like that is rare,” he says. “Something that will deliver on multiple levels. As a director, it lets you flex two creative muscles.” Ironically, when it came to Koepp, the process of bringing it to the screen would see him adapting himself for the first time in his career.
Ultimately, Koepp delighted in the debut opportunity, jumping at the chance to visualise what had so far only existed in his mind and on the page. “This is a story I’ve been excited about for several years, since I started the book. It’s a fast-paced science-fiction thriller, which has always been one of my loves,” Koepp says, noting that John Carpenter’s The Thing, with which Cold Storage shares its themes of ordinary folk facing an extra-terrestrial threat, remains one of his favourite ever movies.
And then, of course, was how well his novel had been received in the first place, embraced across the world – it has now been translated into no less than 15 languages – for its distinctly Koeppian fusion of the fictional and the factual.
“One of the best reactions I got when the book came out was the number of people who came forward to say, ‘Wait, can this really happen?’” Koepp smiles. “To which I would say, ‘Yes. We are one small mutation away from this being able to really happen.’ The real scientific basis of the story makes it a better story. It’s a great hook.”
The ensuing film harkens back delightfully to everything from those classic ‘80s John Carpenters to 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 1955’s The Quatermass Xperiment – Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 cult classic Wake in Fright was also a guiding light, say its filmmakers – to modern genre fusions like Tremors, Shaun of the Dead and Men In Black.
Adapting the Novel
“When it came time to adapt this story as a screenplay, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’d had a movie structure in the back of my mind the entire time I was writing the book,” Koepp chuckles. “Thirty years of screenwriting habits don’t just disappear!”
Koepp’s ability to balance tension, character and spectacle saw Keery devour his screenplay in record time, even for him. “My barometer generally for reading a script is, ‘How quickly can I read this thing?’ Or, ‘How many cups of tea do I have to drink in between, getting up and getting down, and reading this thing?’ And this was one you just read,” he grins.
“One of the reasons I was attracted to this script was because it’s so streamlined and has a lot of different genres embedded in it. It’s a character piece but surrounded by this crazy situation. You look at all the stuff David has done, and his track record is unbelievable. With this, the proof is in the pudding. I read it in about 20 minutes!”
It’s for myriad reasons, its makers maintain, that COLD STORAGE is an essential big screen experience. There is, of course, the ‘first date factor’ that Keery speaks so enthusiastically about, and that Jonny Campbell also echoes. “It’s a great first date experience because there’s the frisson of these young people who fall for one another. I think that will resonate with people going on a first date together,” the director says.
But, equally, this is a story, Jonny Campbell continues, that everyone will be able to gel with, captivated by its off-the-wall dialogue, the naturalistic reactions of its characters and the distinctly unnatural foe they find themselves facing.
“It shares DNA with classic sci-fi but also isn’t treading old ground. This is reaching into new territory, with a story that hooks you instantly and runs away with you,” the director says. “Hold your breath because it has a momentum of its own. This is a world that goes from the microscopic to the epic. An extreme, escapist classic.”
Over his career, Jonny Campbell has been the architect of a wide spectrum of groundbreaking and high-profile television drama. Campbell’s opening film in the BBC/Netflix DRACULA adaptation was critically acclaimed as was his Bafta-nominated 6-part comedy thriller AM I BEING UNREASONABLE? Before that, his 6-part spy thriller INFORMER (BBC/Amazon) starring Paddy Considine, Bel Powley and newcomer Nabhaan Rizwan was also Bafta-nominated for Best Series. He helmed Peter Kay’s classic comedy PHOENIX NIGHTS and ASHES TO ASHES and worked on the original series of Paul Abbott’s SHAMELESS as well as acclaimed episodes of the spy drama SPOOKS (MI-5) starring Matthew Macfadyen. He directed one of the DOCTOR WHO ‘fans’ favourite-ever episodes: ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ penned by Richard Curtis and nominated for many awards including a Hugo and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Bradbury award. He then captured the nation’s hearts with TV bio-pic ERIC AND ERNIE, garnering 5 BAFTA nominations and 2 wins for Best Actor and Writer as well as the RTS and Press Guild awards for Best Single Film. After winning a further 2 BAFTAs for cult hit zombie drama IN THE FLESH (Best Mini Series & Writer), Jonny directed the adaptation of JK Rowling’s THE CASUAL VACANCY for BBC1/HBO, ´Contrapasso’ in Season 1 of WESTWORLD (HBO) and Peter Moffat’s THE LAST POST. His debut feature film, the Warner Brothers/Ealing Studios ALIEN AUTOPSY was selected for the AFI Fest in Los Angeles. Before embarking on his directing career, Jonny graduated in French & German and worked on documentaries at Granada Television in Manchester.
David Koepp has written or co-written the screenplays for more than thirty films, including APARTMENT ZERO, BAD INFLUENCE, DEATH BECOMES HER, CARLITO’S WAY, JURASSIC PARK, THE PAPER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, SNAKE EYES, PANIC ROOM, SPIDER-MAN, WAR OF THE WORLDS, INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, ANGELS & DEMONS, INFERNO, KIMI,PRESENCE, BLACK BAG, and JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH. His second novel, AURORA, was published by HarperCollins in 2022. His story YARD WORK, narrated by Kevin Bacon, was released by Audible Originals in 2020. As a director, his work includes the films THE TRIGGER EFFECT, STIR OF ECHOES, SECRET WINDOW, GHOST TOWN, PREMIUM RUSH, and YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT. GHOST TOWN and PREMIUM RUSH were co-written with the enigmatic John Kamps. He was born in Pewaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from UCLA’s film school in 1986. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.
