Everybody loves a globetrotting adventure; not only do they unfold in exotic settings, but the narrative is often packed with action, peril, villains and the unknown. Apple TV+’s Fountain of Youth delivers on all that and more. The movie follows two estranged siblings — Luke (John Krasinski) and Charlotte (Natalie Portman) — embarking on a worldwide quest to find the mythic fountain of youth, but they aren’t the only ones willing to do anything to get their hands on the prize. The epic project allowed prolific screenwriter and producer James Vanderbilt – whose credits include Zodiac, White House Down, 2022’s Scream, and Murder Mystery – to play in an epic new genre that harkened back to his childhood.
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Apple TV+ describes the movie, “Fountain of Youth follows two estranged siblings who partner on a global heist to find the mythological Fountain of Youth. They must use their knowledge of history to follow clues on an epic adventure that will change their lives … and possibly lead to immortality.”
ComicBook caught up with Vanderbilt to discuss treasure hunting, crafting astonishing action sequences, sibling rivalry, Sidney’s return to the Scream universe, and more Ready or Not insanity.
ComicBook: Fountain of Youth definitely has this Indiana Jones/Romancing the Stone/National Treasure vibe to it. What’s fun about playing in this globetrotting action arena?
James Vanderbilt: What’s not fun about playing in it? For me, personally, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the movie that made me want to make movies. When I was 8 years old and discovered it on VHS or maybe BETA, my parents let me rent it every weekend. It was the movie where I went, “Okay, what is this opening sequence? How does this work?” It made me start thinking about structure at the age of 8, because I was a nerd. So, I have always loved these kinds of movies. They are all the genres in one. There is romance, there is mystery, there is action. It is all of the good stuff. I think being able to write a movie like that and indulge the inner child within me, which is not that deep within, and actually go out and shoot in all of these incredible places … It’s like, what’s better than that?
So much of this movie was filmed on location around the world. How does that work? Do you plot it in the script and hope those spaces are available?
Absolutely. When I was writing it, and maybe to my detriment, I did not start going, “Oh, I wonder if we could do this or that.” I justwent, “The sky is the limit and they will tell me when to stop and they will tell me when they can’t get it done.” Also, selfishly, I wanted to go to all these places. I was like, “Clickety-clack, Pyramids of Giza. Clickety-clack. Thailand.” Then, I ended up directing a movie in Budapest at the same time we were shooting, so I didn’t get to go to any of them. I kept getting selfies. I think having Apple, Skydance, and [director] Guy Ritchie making the movie … Nobody said no. It’s amazing. They really shot that at the Pyramids of Giza, which was incredible to me.
If Romancing the Stone was an inspiration, the two lead Fountain characters would have been romantic rivals. What was more interesting about making them siblings instead?
It was the thing that cracked it open for me. The way the movie came about was Tripp Vinson had this idea of doing something about the Fountain of Youth, but he didn’t know what it would be. He came to us at Project X — because we had done Murder Mystery together at Netflix and had known each other for a long time — to produce it and were actually looking for writers. I wasn’t going to write it. Ultimately, in a Thanos-like moment of, “I’ll do it myself,” the thing that cracked it open for me was I wanted to tell a story about two siblings. I have three kids and I see sibling rivalry every day. I have a brother. And, as soon as I went, “It’s not the man and the woman and the tension between them, and it’s a brother and a sister who annoy the sh-t out of each other,” it felt like the chocolate going into the peanut butter. I was like, “Oh, this is what makes it interesting and different and exciting.” From that, those two characters, the whole thing spun out of my head really fast together. That was the key in the lock, for me.
Guy Ritchie is a director with vision. What kind of notes or input did he give you regarding the script?
He was very specific about it. The thing about Guy, too, is he has so many opportunities and does so many things that he is not looking to develop, develop, develop. If he reads something, he either wants to make that movie or he is not going to make that movie. He is not going to spend three years building something from the ground up.
Guy came into this thing and it was a very quick process between the two of us. And he is a writer, as well, and I’m a director. When you both speak that language, it becomes very shorthand. He got it immediately, what it was. He had some very specific things and changes that were really easy to execute and really smart in terms of the characters, in terms of the pacing of the movie.
In the original script, they go down to the Titanic and raise the Titanic. I got a call and it was like, “We don’t want to do the Titanic because of the movie stuff. Have you ever heard of this ship, the Lusitania?” “Have I heard of the Lusitania? My great-grandfather died on it.” That’s how that came into the movie. So, I was like, “I am going to write you something about the Lusitania that is so true…” It was things like that. It was character stuff, but also technical stuff.
One of the wonderful things about him is he has worked in so many genres, but he has been doing this for so long. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. It’s great to work with a director like that.
Another fun facet of these types of movies is how they contain nuggets of truth. It’s almost like a historical lesson behind them.
One of the things that I loved about this movie, and I really try to do, is as crazy as some of the stuff is and the mythology we come up with, I try to root as much of it in actual historical fact as possible. When you are talking about the paintings in the movie, those are all real paintings. When you talk about the one that got stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston, that painting was actually stolen from the Gardner Museum. When you talk about the Lusitania and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, that’s a real thing. There is a biblical thing later on in the movie that refers to an actual misprint that happened. All of that stuff is real. I think you love learning in movies about stuff and not in a history lesson way, but just in a way of, “That’s really cool. I didn’t know that.”
There’s plenty of jaw-dropping action sequences. Two stand out. One involved a sinking ship, the Lusitania. How did that confrontation evolve from page to screen considering how difficult it is to work with water?
It was one of those things that, God bless them, they never really blinked at. It was incredible. I loved the idea of raising a sinking ship and then having a fight on a sinking ship that is sinking again. That was a cool way of doing it. I think there was a version where it didn’t come all the way up and they bubbled it underwater. In a later draft, I was like, “No, no, no. Let’s bring it all the way to the surface.” But, in terms of stuff like that, everybody was really excited to do all of the action. I never got a call which said, “Water is really hard to work with.” Everybody was like, “That’s the special sauce of this sequence or that sequence.” You are lucky to have a great director and an incredible stunt team and people who plan it out, and build it on tanks and gimbals and all of the great fun toys. Everybody put their backs into it and made it work, which is wonderful as a writer.
Another stellar fight unfolds in the library between Luke and Esme. Why did you take a more whimsical approach with that one?
You mentioned it earlier, this central relationship with the siblings, but we get to do the flirty good guy/bad guy stuff with Luke and Esme. First of all, trying to have a quiet fight in a library was interesting to me. Then, the idea of it’s almost a dance of seduction. They are flirting as they fight. It’s a physical conversation between them. That seemed really fun. We have seen, 100 times, the choreography where people are trying to kill each other. The idea that this was more of a dance, and more of a flirtation, to me, was more interesting. I love that relationship. Whenever you can take something and physicalize it … It’s show, don’t tell in screenwriting.
John Krasinski said he was injured during a stunt. How game was he for everything? Was there anything you had to pull back on?
There was nothing we had to pull back on in terms of what he was game for. It’s when he was running for the train, which is nothing you would think … Listen, he and I are around the same age. I can sleep wrong and hurt myself. The fact that John is able to do all this stuff is incredible, but no one ever told us to try less hard or stop or make it easier. It was all about, “Oh, that is really cool. How do we do that?”
John was as game as everybody else was for it. He is a guy who is self-effacing and very funny, but you look at what he’s been able to do in his career and how he has gone from someone who is known for being the funny guy on a sitcom to a full-blown action hero, that’s not somebody who shies away from stuff. That is someone who jumps right in. We are very lucky to have him as Luke.
There is so much real estate left to mine with these treasure chasers. Which artifacts are on your wish list for them to hunt down next?
It’s funny, I have thought about a few things. I will keep them to myself. One of the things I try to do on the movies I work on is … I grew up in a time when sequels were never an assumption or you plant things in the first movie. God bless Marvel and people who do, but I love a full meal. I love a movie you can sit down and watch from start to finish and get a full story. I think Fountain of Youth is that in a really great way. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be thrilled to do it again. I love spending time with these characters in my head and characters on the screen. The journey is more important than the prize, as they say in the movie, but there are plenty of great prizes out there.
This is a movie the whole family can sit down and watch, but let’s touch on a few of your projects that are not as family-friendly. Looking at Scream 7, it’s no secret that [Neve Campbell’s] Sidney has a family. What does having a daughter allow you to explore with Sidney that we’ve never seen before?
That’s a great question. I am going to answer it by not answering it. When you become a parent, your life changes because you are no longer the center of the universe. Neve is a parent. I am a parent. We talked a lot about what this movie is. I am really excited for people to see what that is.
The core four is no more. What does that mean for [Jasmin Savoy Brown’s] Mindy and [Mason Gooding’s] Chad?
I think you just have to see. That one is not only close to the vest, but it’s under the vest.
It’s been reported Stu, Roman, and Dewey will return in some capacity. Fans theorize Randy and Jill are still alive. What other names were thrown in the mix at one time or another?
There is no way I am going anywhere near that. I love the question, I appreciate it. All will be revealed February 26th, 2026. I can’t wait for you to see it. What I will say is that watching Kevin Williamson work with Neve Campbell on the set of a Scream movie is one of the most incredible things. Just as a nerd, for myself, and I already made two Scream movies … It’s one of the most incredible moments of my life to see. All will be revealed.
Let’s shift to Ready or Not 2. Grace survived the game “Hide and Seek.” Obviously, you do not want to repeat what has been done before. How do you feel you are shaking things up for this sequel?
There are a couple of different ways we are doing it. I don’t want to give anything away. It’s so early and there is so little out there. What I will say is one of the reasons it has taken a minute to make this sequel was we were really hard on ourselves on not just repeating what the first movie was, but also, not losing the sauce of what the first movie was.
It’s interesting because there’s a debate all the way through as to what is real and what is not. That is answered at the end of the first movie, so you can’t put that Le Bail back in the bottle. What Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy do in this script is incredibly smart. As soon as they pitched it, it was, “Of course that’s what it is. That’s a great idea.” It’s such a great way to tell this story. I am so excited for people to see it. I’m so excited it’s Radio Silence. It is literally making movies with friends. It’s the same costume designer. It’s the same production designer. It’s the same DP. It’s like a family getting together again and getting the whole band back together again, with Samara [Weaving] as our leader. And it’s such an amazing cast.
How important do you feel it is to go into a sequel and expand the mythology that has already been established, whether it’s exploring the games or these Faustian deals?
I always like learning new things and it’s the process of discovering. At the same time, I feel you don’t want to over explain things, too. “Oh, that was such an interesting, mysterious thing that is now in the sequel and has been given five minutes of exposition explaining it into the ground?” It’s not so interesting or mysterious anymore. That is something we always talked about. What is the line you don’t want to cross over?
I think it’s safe to say we expand the mythology without explaining the entire mythology. I don’t know if that sounds exciting, but it’s exciting to us. I think it’s the right amount of worldbuilding, while still telling an amazing emotional story. We felt so privileged that people embraced that movie, that we didn’t want to revisit it if it was going to kinda be like, “Oh, look. They did it again.” We were all okay leaving it be if we didn’t come up with something that we felt added to it, or in some ways, topped it. We are all really excited about what it is going to be.
The tagline “Ready or Not: Here I Come” is so on the nose. Did you have any other discussions regarding other titles?
No. From five years ago, Guy and Ryan were like, “This is what we are calling the sequel and we will fight anyone who tries to stop it.” “No, we like it.”
What other games would you like Grace and company to play?
God, I don’t know if I want them to play any more games. I love Grace and company. Again, I don’t want to get into any spoilers or not spoilers. It’s a pretty good time.
Fountain of Youth is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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