FILM 2282: THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020)

TRIVIA: Leigh Whannell chose not to have an opening establishing Cecilia's predicament with Adrian "because I wanted to just drop the audience into Cecilia's situation without any back story and make them feel everything through her, and luckily I had Elisabeth Moss who is very good at communicating a lot to the audience without saying anything."

The film was originally going to be a part of the Dark Universe, with Johnny Depp starring as the titular character, and Ed Solomon writing the screenplay, but changes were made to the Dark Universe to focus on individual storytelling and moving on from the shared universe concept after the box office failure of The Mummy (2017), which itself was an attempt to reboot the Dark Universe after the box office disappointment of Dracula Untold(2014).

Whannell and his crew used a combination of old-school techniques and state-of-the-art CGI wizardry to bring the Invisible Man to life, with some scenes requiring a fully-green-suited actor that could be painted out later and others achieved with nothing more than a simple bit of string. "Well with, say, the fight scenes, that was a real mixture of things," Whannell said. "We had Lizzie being pulled around in wires. We had a stunt person in a green suit, who then had to be removed digitally. "But then also in those scenes we would also use really old school practical effects like pulling doors closed with a piece of string. Some props guy would be hidden in a cabinet, and he would pull this piece of string and a door would close or a cabinet would open. It made you realise that how you do a visual effect doesn't matter - it's only the end result that matters."

Armie Hammer and Alexander Skarsgård were the studio's top choices for the titular role.

Pine trees aren't native to Australia, which is where the movie was filmed, so the sequence where Cecilia runs into the night amid the pine trees was actually shot at a plantation where they're grown for furniture and Christmas trees. "If the sun was up you would see that these pine trees are planted in really neat rows, not natural at all."

Leigh Whannell discovered through reviews that the film is a nightmare for trypophobics -- people who have a fear of closely-packed holes -- as the invisibility suit terrifies or disgusts them. "That's not something I was planning for."

That's Nash Edgerton at (1:32:05) as one of the guards. He's a filmmaker in his own right (The Square, 2008) and emailed Whannell asking if he could visit the set "and die." .