‘It’s What’s Inside’ Team Breaks Down Selling Their Low Budget Thriller to Netflix for $17 Million, Reveals a Wild Alternate Ending and Sequel Potential
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “It’s What’s Inside,” now streaming on Netflix.
Writer and director Greg Jardin’s debut feature, “It’s What’s Inside,” is a body-swapping mystery. Yet Jardin had his own out-of-body experience the day the movie started an intense bidding war at Sundance in January.
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“It’s still surreal now,” he says. “We made this low budget movie in a bit of a bubble, just with hopes that someone would buy it at a festival. Getting into Sundance alone was awesome. And then our first offer came in 24 hours after our premiere and was well over our budget. I was like, ‘Man, this is incredible.'”
But the buzz around Park City kept growing.
“It was my first experience,” he says. “With any of that stuff, there’s essentially a bidding war that lasted about 36 hours. I was in meetings with our financiers and sales agent. But when the bidding war ended and Netflix bought it for $17 million, I was like, ‘I can’t believe they spent this.’ I still can’t. I told them, ‘It’s crazy — you guys spent this much money on this movie.’ I’m very thankful. It’s awesome.”
But the story of “It’s What’s Inside” was no overnight success. In the film, a group of friends has a mansion party and, using a mysterious machine, all switch souls and bodies at random. But the novelty soon becomes a nightmare after lies are told and blood is shed. But Jardin and producer Jason Baum, a longtime friend and collaborator, first discussed the idea eight years ago in a far different form.
“I thought the writing was phenomenal but it was just very epic for a first time feature,” Baum says of the initial script. “It was just very robust. I was real with him and said, ‘Hey, this script is phenomenal, but the idea of you trying to take it on as a first-time feature director is a challenge. I think it would be in your best interest to find the things that are great about the script and find a way to do it with smaller means.'”
Jardin simplified the idea and came back to Baum a year later with a much more nimble script.
“I just came up with the basic constraints of eight people in the house as a party,” Jardin says. “Someone has a suitcase, and the suitcase has some sort of sci-fi thing in it. I had just played the game Werewolf, aka Mafia, for the first time at a friend’s party. The stakes of a party game were pretty fresh in my mind. I came up with the body swap idea a few months in. But what got me excited about the idea is ‘What happens if a bunch of people swap bodies and then two of them died?'”
Even with the smaller scale, Jardin wanted to infuse his visual storytelling with some flair. Considering souls are swapping bodies for much of “It’s What’s Inside,” it could have become confusing to keep track of who is who. But by using tricks such as split screen and intentional lighting, Jardin succeeds at keeping the cinematic language clear.
“My biggest concern going into this was maintaining the clarity when necessary,” Jardin says. “You want there to be some good confusion where people are trying to figure it out, but then you don’t want there to be bad confusion where ‘I have no idea what I’m watching and now I’ve tuned out.'”
Luckily, Baum, who has produced for directors like Spike Jonze, Ava DuVernay and Hiro Murai, is no stranger to rolling up his sleeves to get the job done.
“I’m very comfortable on the physical side, but I like to view myself as a creative person,” he says. “I was deeply involved in everything physical with the film, in terms of hiring the crew, helping find the location and settling on filming in Oregon. I worked to be Greg’s day-to-day producer, making sure he had everything he needed on a logistical and creative level to make the best possible version of this project.”
Jardin and Baum also got the attention of Such in 2021, when producer William Rosenfeld read the “thrilling and unique” script. He was so inspired by Jardin’s vision that he invested more time and resources into the project than he anticipated.
“Greg was not only the director and screenwriter, but he also edited the film and oversaw VFX and even did some of the sound work,” Rosenfeld said in a statement to Variety. “He was indefatigable, but wearing all those hats ultimately required additional time to fully realize his vision. My fellow producer, Jason Baum, and I eventually moved into the edit with Greg for a few months to be a sounding board and help in any way we could, which at times meant providing feedback and other times reminding him to eat and sleep. After a first test screening, Greg discussed with [Such’s] Bob [Kapp], Riaz [Rizvi] and me that he thought the film needed a few new scenes. That meant pickup shoots which meant additional time and money, but we absolutely believed in Greg and had been in the trenches with him long enough to trust his judgment, his artist’s mind, and his lights-out abilities. We felt pretty good about the rough cut, but the final cut was sensational. So, the lengthy post-production was a risk, but it worked and then some.”
One element Jardin was particular about was nailing the tone of the ending, in which bad boyfriend Cyrus (James Morosini) gets his comeuppance. But it was tweaked from a darker earlier draft which gave his put-upon girlfriend Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) less agency.
“I’m pleasantly surprised to see that people have different opinions on the ‘ethics’ of the ending, which does excite me,” Jardin says. “But the original ending had a darker tone: Shelby stayed in Nikki’s body and it was Nikki who visited him in jail and told him to F off. Once I started working with the cast, firming up the tone, hearing the music cue and the idea that the ending would be a big victory, we decided to change it so that Shelby is back in her own body, which felt like more of a victory for her. I initially wanted it to be more of a ‘Black Mirror’: It ends and the main character gets what they want, but you as the audience feel uneasy about it. But after just going through everything, it seems like she should grow more as a character and not take that dark of a turn.”
With his movie available to watch on Netflix, Jardin is now focused on his next project, which he describes as a “dramatic thriller.” But he’s open to the idea of a sequel to “It’s What’s Inside,” even if he hasn’t quite nailed down what that would be yet.
“People have been asking about that since Sundance, and I’ve been so shocked,” he says. “I guess time will tell, but there are no firm plans to do a sequel at this point.”
Ultimately, Jardin’s experience on the business side of “It’s What’s Inside” will leave him prepared for the next phase of his career, and demystified Hollywood accounting.
“I’ve learned a lot about the business aspect going into this movie,” he says. “I can firmly say I am not a millionaire. People were texting me, ‘Oh, I guess next dinner’s on you!’ I was very naive and ignorant as far as how sales worked, up until now. I think the idea that the film is sold by the people who paid for it makes sense, but that’s not something I think a lot of people necessarily realize. Even if you’re the writer or director, your deal is only as good as whatever you negotiate two years prior. I’m not trying to say this with any bitterness or anything, but I think it’s a misconception.”
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