Game Night

Mark Perez wrote the script, but Jason Bateman was set to direct. He stepped off once John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein made clear they wanted to direct their own script; hired in 2016 to rewrite and direct, they replaced nearly all the dialogue. Bateman produced and took the lead. They asked Cliff Martinez for a mostly synth score in the key of eighties films that run over one night, and set themselves a rule: never play the comedy, handle it as a thriller. The laugh comes from how late the characters catch up, not the lines. The suburb looking like a board game model is drone work plus visual effects. The Fabergé egg sequence reads as one unbroken take but is stitched from gimbal and cable camera pieces, the egg digital for the passes. The mansion is a real house north of Atlanta with a three storey atrium; a section of its balcony railing was rebuilt on hidden hinges so the camera could dive over it. Britain classified the film 15. A good fit if you want the characters to work out that the game has turned real when you do. Not for anyone who would rather not see injury in a comedy; Annie shoots her husband in the arm and the group spends the night with that wound.