Run, run, run… It’s time to run and hide. The score from 2019’s horror-thriller Ready or Not certainly rings true on the set of its sequel, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. The second installment picks up immediately following the events of the original property. A shocked and blood-soaked Grace (Samara Weaving) sits savoring a cigarette after surviving a twisted game of hide-and-seek against her Satan-worshipping in-laws… an ordeal that inevitably concluded with the Le Domas family exploding. She’s soon rushed to the hospital, where her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) shows up. The two quickly discover that four other elite families want a shot at the sisters in order to assume control of a shadowy organization that rules the world.
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It’s May 8, 2025, and ComicBook is on the Toronto, Ontario set of the highly anticipated Here I Come. Today’s sequences take place on location, on the grounds of the Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex. Outside the building, siblings Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) jump into a golf cart. “When was the last time the Council convened?” asks Ursula. Apparently, October, 1963. The two exchange words before zooming off, eager for the hunt for Grace – still wearing her bloodstained and tattered bride’s dress – and Faith to begin.
Later, another scene finds the sisters, handcuffed together, frantically racing down a small hill, huffing and puffing, towards a building that will hopefully provide a momentary safe haven. They swing open a door that sports an “employees only” sign and dash in. When the cameras stop rolling, Weaving tells Newton, “You nearly made me p*ss.” Contrary to the evidence, it appears to be all fun and games on this shoot.
In a large building, that serves as a wedding venue for more mayhem, Radio Silence, the filmmaking collective of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, plunk themselves down to discuss sequel pitfalls, the importance of world-building, escalating the stakes, and topping the original’s iconic ending.
ComicBook: What’s the appeal of coming back for another Ready or Not?
Tyler Gillett: I can say that a lot of the appeal for us was returning with the same group of people that we made the first movie with. Right after the release of Ready or Not, we all went to Vegas to break the second movie and talk about a sequel. I think just being together in the same place… There’s something so addictive about time we all spend together with each other. I think it was really just clear that this was always going to be something that we’d work on together. We had such fond memories of making the last one, even though it was a challenge. I think when go through an experience like that, maybe because it’s particularly difficult and you come out the other side with a really tight bond, you just want to replicate it as many times as you can.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Also, working with a lot of the same crew, it was really exciting coming back up here with the same people. Ready or Not was the kind of movie we like as fans. We love survive-the-night, strong-central character. It just had all that. Samara is just f*cking incredible. Even just the story and the characters and being, “How could we even do this again in a totally unexpected way?” That challenge was also really exciting.
Gillett: Making any movie is hard, but I think the tone of what Ready or Not is, we experience that every day in the making of it. It’s very fun. It’s brutal at times, but it’s always a f*cking ride. It’s always ridiculous. Yesterday, it was like 65 setups in this ballroom. Crazy fight sequence. And it was one of the harder days we’ve shot in a long time. And we were just laughing hysterically all day.
Bettinelli-Olpin: You feel great at the end of the day, even though your body has given out.
People talk about the sequel curse. Sequels are never as good as the original. What’s your philosophy when it comes to second installments and how did you apply it to Ready or Not 2?
Gillett: We talked about that so much. And we talked about our favorite sequels a lot and the really successful ones like Terminator 2 and Aliens and Godfather II, the ones that sort of flip the first movie on their head. One of the things we went into this saying over and over to each other, the producers and the writers was, “We cannot, and should not, want to try to replicate the first.” If we are just trying to play the greatest hits, we are going to fail and we won’t have a good time making it. We will be disappointed in ourselves, so let’s try and make this wildly different, while still thematically tied. The character has to go on a new, but somewhat, similar emotional journey. But how can we take all the things we love about the original and maintain those, but in a way that is exciting hopefully to the viewer, but also to us?
Bettinelli-Olpin: Yeah, you sort of feel it with people…. Their love of the first movie. There’s a part of you that’s like, “Oh right. We can probably push those same buttons and get a similar response out of people.” But at the end of the day, we kept saying, “We can’t be precious. We can’t be precious. There’s nothing precious.” You have to do the opposite and say “F*ck you” a little bit to the first movie and try to tear it apart, so that you can design something original that has its own identity, but the same attitude.
Gillett: Yeah, exactly, but don’t worry people. It’s love. We do push some of the same buttons. We just try to do it in a different way.
Thinking about sequels, you have now worked on two different, well-known brands that have sequels. You did two Scream films and now you are doing two Ready or Nots. What’s the difference between a Ready or Not sequel and a Scream sequel?
Bettinelli-Olpin: That’s a good question. Scream is so much its own thing. When we stepped into that franchise, it was already such its own identity and such a beloved franchise. So, I think for us, our approach to Scream 6 was very much like, “How do we make our version of a Scream movie? What do we do that makes us really excited within the Scream world?”
Gillett: We had a playbook that we had to follow, to a certain extent.
Bettinelli-Olpin: There were guardrails that we couldn’t go out of. Maybe we did. Who knows?
Gillett: Some fans would say we threw the f*cking playbook out. But some fans need to calm the f*ck down.
Bettinelli-Olpin: No comment. But on this, because it was ours and it’s the same producers and the same writers and Samara, we have a real sense of ownership from jump with this. There was a lot of, “This is our ship. We can do whatever the f*ck we want with it. There are no rules here. It’s all on us, in a way.” That was one of the big things.
Gillett: I think one of the unique things about Ready or Not, that is very different than Scream, although it traffics in the same tone in some respects, is we are actually building mythology in the Ready or Not movies. There is a fantasy-horror element in it and it’s been really fun to build out the world of that, and tell a story that feels like its about a corner of something much larger and figuring out what you should allow in and, obviously, not wanting it to become so big that it just becomes a rules-and-mythology movie, with no character at the center. So, it’s been really fun to build a bigger sandbox in terms of what we know about the Le Domas family and Le Bail and all of those ingredients, and then drop Grace into another insane experience within that mythology. It’s been really creative to get to poke at something larger, off-screen story of the world around this movie.
Can you expand on that a little bit more? We know there’s a council involved in this movie. How are you expanding that world of the gaming of it?
Bettinelli-Olpin: That’s a good question. The gaming aspect… It plays in a thematic way, in a lot of ways. It’s very much a part of the identity of the council, of the movie, of the families within the council. Yes, there’s a bit of entertainment at play and the idea that…
Gillett: We will say that the Le Domas family in the first movie became famous and wealthy through board games. All of the families on the council in this movie have become wealthy – in some way, shape or form – from their own way because of gaming. Casinos. Horse racing. Entertainment. So, we are also poking a little bit of fun at various subcultures, in a really cool and interesting way. Gaming is very much a thru line.
What game are they actually playing?
Bettinelli-Olpin: There is not a name, necessarily. It’s a game very specific to the council. It’s kind of its own game. It’s a little bit of a pheasant hunt.
Following up on who these characters are, it seems like the last couple of films have had a rich kind-of-vibe, which is slightly topical and timely right now. Is that an interest you guys have in your storytelling?
Gillett: It seems to come through in every movie, even when we don’t do it overtly, it still seeps in.
Bettinelli-Olpin: One of the things we try really hard to achieve is the movie, the concept of what’s happening in an active way in the movie, is an exploration of that, so the movie never has to declare its message. You know going in, and having had the experience of watching the first movie, there’s not a lot of soapbox messaging about how bad the one percent are. The movie is just sort of designed to explore that in a very active way.
Gillett: It wears its message on its sleeve. It’s not hiding it.
Bettinelli-Olpin: It doesn’t need to lecture. It’s been easier to achieve with this movie because, obviously, drafting off the first, everybody knows conceptually it’s going to be travelling a similar path, in some ways, thematically. I think we have been able to bury that even deeper.
Gillett: Extremely visible Trojan Horse.
You guys always walk this tightrope between humor and horror. What do you enjoy about leaning into those two genres and why does it work for Ready or Not?
Bettinelli-Olpin: It’s funny. It’s not like we have some special formula. A lot of it is taste. It’s what we like. In everything we have ever made, including Ready or Not, there’s stuff that goes too far in one direction. “It’s too goofy. It’s too funny. Or it’s too f*cked up or violent or bloody or whatever.” We have a reaction to it and go, “Ahh… I don’t like it,” and we take it out. At the end of the day, it just comes down to we are following our taste and stuff that we like. We are really lucky to work with the same group of people over and over, who also have a shared taste. So, we get to play a lot of games of, “Oh, that’s cool. What if….?” And just kind of find that thing that makes us all excited. That always leads us down horror and comedy. For us, at the end of the day, those two things are so intrinsically tied, in every way, that I don’t know if we could make a straight horror film. And I don’t know if we could make a straight comedy. We just love this intersection of all of them.
Gillett: I think there are certain topics that we know that you can’t be funny with. We just avoid those things. The special sauce for us is, “What’s the most absurd situation?” We say all the time that we kind of love taking a B-movie concept and actually treating it with more care and craft and nuance and emotion, than anyone would ever expect. What you end up with is a movie that is really wacky and absurd, but has a real soul and can also make you feel real things. That, to us, is the ultimate aim. The dumbest thing taken so seriously. That, for us, is what the tone is. The stupidest idea taken really seriously. That’s the sweet spot.
The dialogue, too. Look at Adam Brody in Ready or Not. He had such great lines and the delivery. “Do you think this is a game…”
You have to have people treating it with that level of craft and seriousness. It’s really easy, and it’s one of the things that we tone check all the time, is the line between something feeling absurd and funny and something feeling too broad. It’s really fine sometimes. You have to be careful. It would be easy to make the broad-campy version and you just have to keep nudging it towards, “What’s grounded? What’s real?” I am going to sound like a douche but, “What’s the more sophisticated version,” because that’s the balance of that. The silly-stupid thing treated with a lot of sophistication is very funny to us.
I just think about Abigail a lot. Vampire-ballerina movie. What if you had real emotion and love these characters?
Do you get any kind of pushback or studio notes from these kinds of things? You said it’s very much driven by your personal taste, but do you ever get any notes like, “No, this needs to be more mass-commercial appeal? Or is it, “No, you’ve got Samara Weaving, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Shawn Hatosy, so we kind of don’t care.”
Bettinelli-Olpin: We got really lucky. At this point, people kind of know that if they are hiring us, what we are doing. I think they kind of trust us to do that and know that if they want to sand off the edges, it won’t be that. We say that all the time that you could very easily f*ck this up and take off all the stuff that feels a little dangerous or a little bit like, “Oh no, is that pushing it too far?” And, all of a sudden, you have the boringest version possible, which you could do. We have been really lucky with the execs that we have worked with, that they all embrace the same stuff we embrace, for the most part.
Gillett: I think it’s one of the things that we have loved the most about working with them (Searchlight Pictures) is that their notes are never about… It’s always about taste. It’s a fun thing to have a conversation about. You can debate what feels right and what you love. It never feels like you are driven by some goal on the horizon, like the box office. One of our favorite stories from the first Ready or Not was walking out of our first preview screening. It scored well. Not astronomical, but high. All of the execs after that preview screening were hugging us and hi-fiving and cheering. Matt and I were like, “Oh f*ck. We’ve got to get back in the editing and make changes.” They were like, “This is the highest scoring movie we have ever previewed.” Then, of course, they told us the story of No Country for Old Men, which famously tested very poorly and then won a ton of f*cking Oscars. It’s kudos to them. They trust their guts. When they love something, they get behind it. They have been really supportive.
Bettinelli-Olpin: They’ve said to us on numerous occasions like, “the reason we want to do this with you guys is to get that thing that is surprising and fun and exciting.
Can you talk about casting? How do you decide to bring back people that you have worked with, such as Kathryn Newton and Kevin Durand? Is it a big love fest?
Gillett: It kind of is. We have gotten lucky and worked with a lot of great f*cking actors, who are also great people. Why would you not want to work with them again? Whenever we see a role that feels right, we just get excited and see who we can lure in to do it again.
Bettinelli-Olpin: And the more you get to know somebody, the more it’s like, “It would be really fun to see them do X.” That’s oftentimes what steers us towards working with the same people. It’s the desire to be like, “I’ve never seen that person use that gear or do that weird, fun thing. Wouldn’t that be an interesting…”
Gillett: And there’s that trust felt. If we are lucky, they are like, “Sure, let’s go f*cking try that together.”
So, you are making Kathryn and Kevin do stuff that they didn’t do in Abigail?
Gillett: They are very different characters. Kevin is an extremely different character [laughter]. The other side of the pendulum.
Can you tell us how much input does Samara get into this, because it really is her character? I imagine there is a lot of trust there, as well.
Bettinelli-Olpin: Tons. If she doesn’t believe it, it doesn’t make sense. Again, the tone only works because it’s grounded and it feels believable, even when it’s f*cking crazy and when it’s at its wackiest. The anchor to all of that is Sam. If she tells us something is not ringing true, she’s right. And been so valuable.
Gillett: She is very protective of the character, and she should be. I am just thinking of pre-production and we were trying to get the script. You rejigger it a million times in pre-production. And she was so conscious of where these emotional beats need to land and how they need to land, which was really helpful for us when we have 800 balls in the air, to have someone who is so good and so dedicated to tracking that character in such a great way. We can all work together to get everything right, but it’s on a daily basis, too. Just yesterday, there were some lines in the script that are really good and read great and were really good to inform character. She goes, “In this scene, there’s no way that I would be able to deal with this emotionally. This is not a thing I could deal with here, so let’s not say it or change it to this.” It’s an ongoing process, but it’s been valuable. She’s so f*cking talented and hard-working.
Bettinelli-Olpin: This one is much more complex and also much more physical.
Gillett: Much more physical and a much more complex story emotionally. Narratively, it’s just bigger. Having her… So much of the work that she does…The emotional continuity of that character has been incredible. We are shooting it a little bit more out of sequence than we did the first movie, which was also just an odd challenge on a movie that has a fairly continuous timeline. It’s just a very different challenge to shoot something like that out of order. Sam has been a savant with tracking all of that.
On a narrative basis, what did picking up the day after allow you to tell storytelling-wise? Why not the week later or a year later?
Bettinelli-Olpin: It felt really exciting to us, at the end of the day. We all had that conversation, us and the writers and the producers, and we were like, “It would be so fun to pick it up immediately, where we have seen a million sequels start down the road. What if we could tie this together, make it the next day and not take our foot off the gas?” It excited us as creators. It excited us from an audience point of view. It also allows Grace’s story continuous and contained. Our goal on this, and it was kind of how we treated the Scream movies, as well, it’s a full new story, but you could also watch both of them and go, “Oh, so the end of the first one is the midpoint. This is not another chapter. This is another part of the same story.”
Gillett: We are suckers for movies that start with a character when they are at their worst and the movie puts them through even more. We talked a lot about Die Hard with a Vengeance and how great the opening is, that McClane is like, “I am in the worst hangover of my life,” and gets called back to duty. How f*cking cool it is to start a character in that place? It just felt like, “Yeah, man. We just put Grace through the worst possible 10 hours of her life. What if it wasn’t over?” That’s such an exciting way to kick off a sequel.
We’ve heard there is a lot of new mythology added to this and it might not be the end of the road. How much of this is potential Easter eggs and laying a foundation for other things or expanding the scope of the world?
Bettinelli-Olpin: I feel like we hold our feet to the fire. We did on Scream 6 and we are doing it on this. We are not worried about a third one. Let’s make this f*cking the best we can. But there’s always a way. None of us thought we would be making a Ready or Not sequel.
Gillett: It was never designed with that in mind.
Bettinelli-Olpin: Our whole thing is let’s make this a full meal. If we are lucky enough to do another one, that’s a problem for another day.
The ending of the original is batsh*t crazy. How challenging is it to replicate that energy for the climactic showdown and give audiences something new, but still has that big-bang factor?
Bettinelli-Olpin: It’s a huge challenge.
Gillett: And we haven’t shot it yet. It might be an even bigger challenge.
Bettinelli-Olpin: Look, we had a lot of conversations in the writing of it. One of the things Ready or Not is remembered for is its ending. Speaking to wanting to deliver something that is satisfying in the way the first one was, but do it differently, we really took pains to design something we think is as interesting, if not more interesting. It’s still going to be fun and wacky and all of those things, but there’s more happening in it. We can’t wait to shoot it. We are very excited to get there. But it matters to us that the movie takes you to a place that it’s never going to go and then it goes even higher and even crazier. If you watch all of our stuff, that’s always what we tend to do. Our movies just never fizzle at the end. They always crescendo. This very much has that same idea in its design.
Your mantra is almost, “Go crazy or go home.”
Gillett: We want you to have a good f*cking time. And if we can also make that emotional and surprising, that’s a win for us.
Is there a way to top exploding people with giant geysers of blood? Do you have something else you are excited about?
Gillett: Guess we will see.
You are saying nothing. You are giving us nothing.
Bettinelli-Olpin: If we had shot it, I would say something, but we haven’t. We are very excited about this end. One of the mantras for this movie was, “If it felt like we were just repeating ourselves, we should do it in a way that was wildly different than what you would expect.” That goes for the end, as well.
Grace and Faith are siblings. What does that relationship look like? How do they navigate what’s going on now compared to what happened then?
Gillett: It’s a big part of the continuity for us. How does a character that has just had that experience… How they are processing it when they are in the midst of processing it. We referenced T2 a lot and Sarah Connor. She’s seen a part of existence that nobody else believes is real. She is so relatable. You love her so much because you, as an audience member, have had the experience with her. We are drafting a little bit off that idea of this, this character that has been through the worst, but it’s also too crazy to believe until, of course, you experience it for yourself. That’s so much fun of the sister pairing in this movie.
Bettinelli-Olpin: Besides the sequel movies we just mentioned, the other holy trilogy of movies that we were referencing were Thelma & Louise, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Midnight Run. That, for us, are all perfect movies. They are all so f*cking rewatchable, and it’s because the characters and relationships are so fantastic. Working with Kathryn on Abigail, working with Samara on Ready or Not and Scream 6, those two people as humans and as actors, we were just obsessed with what if you put those two people together. That was a lot of the genesis for this movie was how do we get there? Ideally, their relationship is the thing that sticks with you if you watch it.
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