Shawn Levy is currently directing Deadpool 3 and is set to direct an upcoming Star Wars film. He has also directed Free Guy, The Adam Project, The Night at the Museum franchise, Real Steal, The Internship, Date Night, and This Is Where I Leave You. He founded 21 Laps Entertainment, which produces Stranger Things, among many other projects. Levy directed the forthcoming Netflix limited series All The Light We Cannot See, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It premieres November 2, 2023. He spoke to Esquire editor-in-chief, Michael Sebastian, in August after filming for Deadpool 3 went on hiatus due to the strike.
I went to the theater again and again to see Return of the Jedi. I vividly remember the scene in which Luke is hiding from Vader in the Emperor’s room and Vader gives the speech that ends with “If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps your sister will.” It was dead quiet. Pin-drop silence. Suddenly Vader has pushed the wrong button. Luke comes screaming out of the shadows and just goes to town in a light saber battle against Vader. The way that felt: The forty seconds of stillness from the audience, then the spectacle and emotion, is seared not just in my eyeballs but in my heart.
That’s the essence of the blockbuster. When the tone is singular, when the themes are resonant, when the experience is connective, when the audience is reminded that the world is far bigger than ourselves, it creates a forever memory. I think that’s beautiful.
But for many years, there’s been a cynicism about whether such a phenomenon is still possible. The endless availability of the scroll has conditioned our attention spans to be far shorter. The world gets so much smaller in the privacy of our feeds. The algorithms give us what we already want and think, and we become no bigger than ourselves. That’s a disaster for a vibrant life. So to what extent, in this fragmented world, can we still come together around a piece of storytelling?
My movie Free Guy came out in 2021, when many people were still avoiding theaters. It defied expectations and became the most successful original movie during the pandemic. It meant so much to us. We were emerging from isolation. It brought people back to communal places and experiences and reminded us how good those touch points are for us. Over the summer, I went to see both Oppenheimer and Barbie by myself. There I was, sitting in a dark room with three-hundred-plus strangers gasping or laughing at the same moments within a story that someone had crafted for us. That felt bigger than one person, bigger than me, bigger than the stranger next to me.
It’s an authentic, communal event.
I had dinner with David Mamet, and I asked him: What’s the greatest thrill of your career? Was it winning the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross? Doing this movie, that movie, writing that book? And he said, “It’s sitting in a theater hearing something I wrote get a laugh from three hundred strangers, because no one ever faked a laugh in a dark room of strangers.”
That experience isn’t limited to theaters. As an executive producer of Stranger Things, I’ve seen hundreds of millions of people, of all generations and around the world, come together around a TV show much in the way they did around Star Wars. When the story connects people in shared emotions, then it’s a blockbuster—whether it’s in a theater or your living room.
A blockbuster in any form is devoted to audience delight. You’re not making something purely for your own satisfaction. When I started my latest project, the limited Netflix series All the Light We Cannot See, which is my first non-comedy, straight-up-period-piece drama, I was asked, “What do you want to make people feel?” And I said, “The answer is in your question: I want to make them feel.”
I’m now making Deadpool 3, the production of which was paused because of the actors’ strike. For one key scene in the movie, I said to my stunt and action team, “Guys, this is the Jedi moment.” I pulled up that scene of Vader and Luke on my phone and restudied how it was photographed, how it was blocked, the framing, the tempo. The keen Star Wars fan will see the shot in my Deadpool movie that was inspired by a moment that I saw in a theater decades ago. That’s a forever memory. And that’s a treasure.
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