The Gorge

Zach Dean’s spec script made the 2020 Black List. Scott Derrickson came aboard in March 2022, Miles Teller that August as star and producer, Anya Taylor-Joy in October, and Apple took it on. Derrickson hired Rick Heinrichs, known for physical sets, and kept the computer work for set extensions rather than virtual environments, with one exception: the gorge. He says they shot real rock walls, canyons and forests in Norway and built the gorge from that footage. The towers are part real: bases and tops built on a stage, the midsections entirely in the computer. The getting to know you stretch is assembled from the leads’ own careers: Taylor-Joy plays chess across the gorge and Teller drums, winking at The Queen’s Gambit and Whiplash. Both found it too obvious and asked for it to go; Teller says the scenes were in the first draft before either was cast. They stayed. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote the score. Apple called it the biggest film premiere in Apple TV+ history but released no viewing figure. A good fit if you want the distance between the towers to carry the tension for a long stretch. Not for anyone expecting a detailed science fiction explanation; what is down there is named as contaminated soldiers from an abandoned wartime facility and left at that.