The Gorge Writer Talks Unlikely Inspiration, Sequels, and More

To say that the last few years in Hollywood have been tumultuous would be a bit of an understatement. While the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes impacted the movie and TV industry specifically, this came hot on the heels of the global coronavirus pandemic, which saw the entire world being holed up in their homes for months on end, forcing us to embrace a new normal. For writer Zach Dean, this experience of isolation and human connection inspired him to write The Gorge, not only as a way to keep himself busy, but also for the therapeutic experience of finding human connection in entirely unexpected scenarios. The Gorge is now streaming on Apple TV+.

“I wrote this in between April and September of 2020, which, for me, I think for most of the world, it was a window where lockdown was super real and no one really knew anything. All we knew was it was really bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was getting and we didn’t know when it was going to end. There wasn’t even talk of a real vaccination, those things weren’t even on the in a realistic window yet,” Dean shared with ComicBook of the film’s origins. “I have three kids, I was worried, man. Plus my whole industry just shut down. Production stopped all over the world. Nobody knew when we were going to make anything again. It was scary. It was scary in terms of big picture and just practically scary in terms of, ‘How do you do when you can’t do?’”

He continued, “I was so freaked out. And then when I was done freaking out, I was like, ‘Well, the one thing I know to do is what I’ve always loved to do, which is I can write original stories and I have time to do it now all of a sudden.’ I had all these ideas, so I started in April and I went into honestly, probably the most prolific window of writing I’ve had in my whole career where I wrote three movies in like six months. It was wonderful. My idea was that even if nothing ever comes of these movies, the process of writing them will be really healthy for me because it’ll give me a place to deal with the fear I was having … I couldn’t answer those questions my kids were asking me, honestly.”

The Gorge is described, “Two highly trained operatives (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late.”

“Basically, The Gorge was the second film that I wrote. I would work in my office at night and I have these big dry erase boards. I remember I was finishing up the first movie I was writing, which I was really into, and I was so in the zone and I was getting really anxious because I didn’t want it to end. But the movie was ending, the script was ending, and I didn’t want to stop because I was afraid that I would lose this edge that I had. I was really in the zone in this flow and it’s hard to get there. And when you get there, you don’t want to quit,” the filmmaker recalled. “So I went out to my office one night and I was literally like, ‘What am I going to write next? I don’t want to quit this feeling and I don’t even want to take a day off.’ So there’s one night, I was out there, I remember, and I literally drew the gorge and I put a tower on one side and a tower on the other side, and I put a little male symbol on one side, a little female symbol on the other side.”

He continued, “And then I wrote ‘snipers.’ It’s a love story and then I had another margarita and then the next morning I went out to my office and I was like, ‘Okay, does this work?’ And it did. I can tell you that it doesn’t always work this way for me, and I can’t speak for other peoples’ processes, but this one, writing The Gorge was really wonderful … every day the story showed itself to me. It wasn’t hard at all. I wrote it as if I was watching the movie unfold in front of my eyes … it’s a love story, for me, first and foremost. It’s a love story about two people who think they are essentially alone in the world, no one will ever understand them. Or, for this case, the one person who does understand or is about to die or dead. And they’re suddenly at this point where they see the one they meet, the one person that might actually get them, but they can’t be with them.

[RELATED – The Gorge Review: Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller Play a Survival Horror Videogame]

The filmmaker went on to describe the impact that a beloved filmmaker had on his work, who had previously delivered audiences films like Jeremiah Johnson, Tootsie, and Three Days of the Condor.

“I only met Sydney Pollack once, before he died. He said this thing which stuck with me, because he knew a lot about this kind of thing in terms of storytelling. He said a love story is only as good as what keeps them apart,” Dean recalled. “So that was with me. I was thinking about how we’re also — everyone is being kept apart at that point, like you couldn’t be you couldn’t be close to other people. You couldn’t see your parents unless you lived right by them. You couldn’t touch people. It was a really weird period of time. Between all of us was this vast, unknown fear of whatever COVID was or how bad it was going to get. That was, in many ways, the gorge between us. The unknown. What is this horrible thing between us that keeps us apart? The movie, in its essence, is really, for me, about love versus the unknown.”

Only time will tell how audiences connect with the movie, but given the expansive potential to further explore the mythology The Gorge has set up, Dean is already considering ways to expand the adventure.

“I have an idea for a prequel, actually. I mean, I have ideas for both,” Dean confirmed of the possible future of the story. “Because I’ve had a certain amount of success with original material, which is hard to do, and I’ve had a lot of original movies made, is that I want to make original franchises. I want there to be a Tomorrow War 2, which I’ve written a script for. I want there to be another Gorge. That’s a dream, man. I love writing original stuff and I’ve been really grateful to have some success with it.”

On the difference between establishing original franchises vs. entering existing properties, Dean detailed, “They’re different animals, but they’re both really cool. I would be remiss to say that — I love writing original stuff and creating original stuff. That’s why I started doing this in the first place. And that’s the thing, for years and years I did this and I never got paid, and I did it anyway because I love to do it. And then they sort of paid me, like, ‘Yeah, great!’ So I love that. Working on stuff like [Fast X], it’s amazing to be part of it. Every day is an education. Like, it’s awesome. And parts of it are so … they activate parts of your brain that you wouldn’t think of, but it’s really amazing. So I think it’s honestly a privilege to be part of that franchise in any way, anything I contribute. That thing is awesome. The idea of having a franchise that is 25 years long, it’s 11 movies. It’s so cool. It’s very different than the original stuff, but I love them both.”

The Gorge is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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