Steven Soderbergh’s ‘No Sudden Move’ Almost Had a Much Darker Ending, Says Writer

Warning: This interview contains spoilers for No Sudden Move on HBO Max.

The last 25 minutes of Steven Soderbergh‘s new star-studded crime drama, No Sudden Move—which opened in theaters and on HBO Max on Thursday—takes a turn you likely won’t see coming. For screenwriter Ed Solomon (Men in Black, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), who had previously collaborated with Soderbergh on the HBO series Mosiac, that turning point was both incredibly challenging, and incredibly rewarding.

“It was no small task,” Solomon told Decider in an interview. “It took me six weeks to get the full scope of the movie down, and it took me three or four weeks just to work on those seven pages.”

To back up a bit: No Sudden Move stars Don Cheadle as a small-time criminal named Curt Goynes who gets hired alongside a fellow criminal, Ronald Russo (Benicio del Toro), to do what they both think is a simple “babysitting” job for the local Detroit mob boss in 1955. But when the job goes wrong, Curt and Ronald follow the money up the ladder and eventually get to the top of a huge, real-life conspiracy helmed by the four biggest auto companies at the time. And viewers are in for a surprise treat: A substantial appearance from an A-list actor who was not billed in the credits.

Solomon spoke to Decider about how that surprise cameo came to be, researching Detroit history for No Sudden Move‘s “true story” components, and the much darker No Sudden Move ending he had originally planned.

Decider: Tell me where the story of No Sudden Moves begins for you. How did you first get the idea for the film?

Ed Solomon: I’d worked with Steven Soderbergh and Casey Silver on Mosaic, which was this six-hour thing on HBO. And we had developed what I thought was a really great working relationship. Casey called me one day and said, “Hey, Steven wants to do a crime noir story, would you be up for that?: And I was, yeah, of course, because these are exactly the kinds of movies I love to watch, but don’t often get an opportunity to write. Mosaic was kind of in that vein, so I think Steven had the faith. Also, we had a good shorthand together now.  I went out to LA to connect with him. We talked, and we were throwing around ideas for either a ’70s style noir or maybe even a ’50s style noir. Originally, we were going to set it all around the country, and it was going to be a bigger movie. As we started breaking the story down, we honed it in on just doing it in Detroit in the mid-50s, In Detroit. And knew we were writing it for Don [Cheadle].

What drew you to Detroit in the ’50s, and in particular, this backdrop of the auto industry?

I asked Steven, “Where would you like to film? What does it want to feel like? What does it want to look like?” Just in talking about feeling and tone, we started thinking about those amazing cars and the music, all emanating from Detroit. And then we were thinking, if this is a bunch of low-level criminals, climbing the strata of society, Detroit was a microcosm for what was happening around the country at that time. And actually, it’s happening now again—this displacement of communities. Then I started researching. 

Right, this is a fictional story, but you draw in all these real-life historical moments, including the construction of the I-375 highway that destroyed a Black neighborhood in Detroit, and a conspiracy involving the auto industry. Tell me about that research process for the “true story” aspect of the movie. 

I do some of it on my own, and I also work with someone who serves as a researcher/dramaturge named Laura Shapiro. I said to her, “Hey, I’m trying to find something that maybe one of the smaller auto companies was trying to steal from maybe one of the bigger ones.” Originally, I was thinking, maybe there’s some new design that’s going to become a fad. Then I thought, what would be more interesting is something that the auto industry was trying to hide. I thought it would be much more interesting if these characters were looking for something if people were trying to keep hidden rather than trying to bring it forward. So Laura suggested the—I’m not gonna name it just because of a spoiler—but that the item that became the MacGuffin of the film. Once I knew that I was like, “Okay, what else was happening in Detroit around then?”

In my own research, I stumbled upon two things simultaneously: an exhibit at the Detroit Public Library, which was called Black Bottom Street View. It was a three-dimensional walk-through exhibit. These amazing people, Emily Kutil and PG Watkins, created 3D replicas using photographs that were taken in the early 1950s by the city of Detroit, which was planning to destroy the neighborhoods. But the citizens thought [the city] was honoring the neighborhood, so they all came out and posed for these pictures. Emily and PG recreated the streets by blowing the photos up, and you could essentially walk the streets.

That was one of two keys to the kingdom, so to speak. The second was meeting with a man named Jamon Jordan, who became our historical consultant, by the way. He runs something called Black Scroll Network, which runs guided tours and lectures about African American History in Detroit.  I met him at Emily’s exhibit at the Detroit Public Library, and he took me on several days just walking the streets, pointing out the buildings talking about the history. I knew, then and there, this was the backdrop for this movie. And we didn’t want to make a political or even a social story, we really just wanted to make a fun crime yarn. But I feel like having something real in the background added power to the story.

One character I was particularly interested in was Bill Duke’s character, Aldrick Watkins. Can you talk more about him and what you saw as his role in the story?

Well, he was representative of one of the classes of gangs that were active in the city at that time. At that time, the purple gang had just been essentially gotten rid of, and there were these African American and white gangs, kind of controlling different parts of the city territorially. And so he was based on an amalgamation of a variety of people. I mean, everyone in the movies is obviously fictional—though, the one event that serves as the MacGuffin is obviously truthful. What I was trying to do—I was thinking about was before, maybe five years earlier, when Don Cheadle’s character went to prison, the tension was much worse. The gangs were much more rivals, but by that time, in the mid-50s, the gangs had worked out—I wouldn’t call it a truce, but an arrangement where they were sharing things and working together. We’re not making a documentary. I just wanted the flavor of those things to be in the background.

I actually had more members of each faction. Frank Capello, played by Ray Liotta—there were more levels to his organization. And there were more levels to Watkins’s organization. But the mission was to create a lean, spare story. It’s not as lean in spirit as I was going for, but again, it was sort of paring things down. One of the interesting things about shooting in COVID, and I think it was a good thing was we had to make choices. Where we had to focus on a smaller landscape to a certain degree, and that made us really get to make choices about who are the most important characters.

SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this interview contains spoilers. Stop reading now if you haven’t seen the movie!

Spoilers—Matt Damon makes a surprise, unbilled appearance at the end of the film, and he plays a pretty important character! How did that scene, and that cameo, come to be?

I was about three-quarters of the way through the script, and I should it to Steven, just to make sure before I finished it up that we were lined up. He said, “My only note is, let’s do something toward the end where we bring in a character that we haven’t introduced—one of those tour-de-force arias who comes in and changes the entire landscape. And it’s like a seven-page monologue.” I was like, well that’s not daunting at all! Just write a great monologue for a major actor who is going to come in for two or three days and just nail it! I was like, “Well Ed, you’re in the big leagues, so step up to the plate and get on base.”

But it was an opportunity to see the whole scope of the movie from an entirely different point of view and give you a chance to realize just how far up the chain these two low-level criminals had gotten. It was no small task. It took me six weeks to get the full scope of the movie down, and it took me three or four weeks just to work on those seven pages.

Did you always know the character would be played by Matt Damon?

We knew it would be someone like him. We talked about a variety of different people, and I think there was some press saying someone else was going to be doing it for a little while. You know, COVID, and the restructuring of the schedule, and the shutdown and the starting again… And then Steven said, “Matt’s gonna do it!” And I have to say, he showed up with it memorized, walked it through on rehearsal, and we all just, jaw-dropped, went, “OK, that was amazing.” And Steven was like, “Well why the hell didn’t I shoot that?”

The whole scene was done pretty quickly. You know, you get actors like Don, Benicio, and Matt in a room… I stood there, watching it, having to pinch myself and tell myself, “Pay attention, this is really rare. Are you seeing what’s happening in front of you and savoring it?” And I did savor it. It was an incredible thing to watch.

I really liked that ending—it’s such a blow that it’s the corporate executive, Matt Damon, who gets all the money, and not our lead protagonists.

I really appreciate that. I remember when I was writing [Damon’s monologue] about, “Hey, it’s only money. I’ll make more. It’s like a lizard tail and you cut it off, it’ll just, it just grows back.” When I was writing that, that’s when I realized, “Oh, he’s gonna end up with all the money at the end, and he’s gonna end up with all the other money that wasn’t even his.” Because that’s just what happens to these guys! And to me, that was much better than the “Hollywood ending,” which would have ended up with our two guys leaving in freedom with all their money and their partners and living happily ever after.

Was that always the ending for the film?

Originally, we had a much darker ending where no one made it. Everyone died. That was the original thought. And then it was like, you know what, that’s too much, that’s not fair to the characters, and it’s not fair to the audience. Because at the end of the day, you actually are invested in these guys. It felt almost like a “screw you” to the audience, which is not what we wanted to do. I didn’t realize that until we got to the end of the script—you know, that just feels too bleak and too dark and it doesn’t feel right for what this movie is. We’re not trying to make a movie that’s just dark and bleak, we want it to be fun and entertaining. That was a little surgical revision—it just took a few different scenes to make it so that Don was running a game on the game. In every move of the movie, Don’s character’s ahead of everyone. He’s clearly the smartest character in the film. He’s playing the long game, and so it didn’t seem right that he didn’t have the bigger plan in place. But whether he makes it or not, sorry, you’ll watch to the end to find that out!

Before I let you go—a while back, it was announced that another sequel to your movie Now You See Me was happening. Can we get an update on Now You See Me 3?

To be honest, I’m not involved in it. I might be involved later down the line as a producer, if it gets made, but I’m not aware of that actually happening. I keep hearing from different corners that I think it’s happening and then I hear it’s not. We’ve been talking about doing a television series that the very talented writer named David Wilcox is creating, but I don’t know if that’s been picked up and greenlit. I mean, they were talking about it, in which case I was going to be involved as a consultant. I wish I had better news because I’d like to see it made!

You recently co-wrote the third Bill & Ted movie. Is there any talk from another writing a fourth Bill & Ted movie?

There’s no official talk about a fourth Bill & Ted movie. But Chris and I—Chris Matheson—co-creator and co-writer of Bill & Ted—he and I have been talking about, “Is there more story to tell?” Because the only reason we would do it is if there’s a really legitimate story to be told. And I think all four of us—Chris and I,  Alex [Winter, and Keanu [Reeves]—and Scott Crew the producer and Jean Paris the director, we had such a good time. We had an actually meaningful, wonderful experience on set making the movie. So we would revisit it if we had a great idea that was worth doing. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Watch No Sudden Move on HBO Max