‘Cuckoo’ Took a Winding Flight to the Screen

Neon’s cerebral horror feature Cuckoo had to perform more than a few clever maneuvers on its flight path to theaters.

Like many projects, the coronavirus pandemic pushed its 2020 start date. Then, delays on lead Hunter Schafer’s HBO hit Euphoria resulted in Cuckoo being pushed even further, which led to some castmembers needing to move on to other commitments, forcing the production to pivot to find new actors to join Schafer.

Writer-director’s Tilman Singer’s project was finally headed toward preproduction in West Germany when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, resulting in the German government taking Cuckoo’s filming locations to house Ukrainian refugees. It was a more than necessary response to a humanitarian crisis, something the Cuckoo team understood. But it left the production in need of other locales to shoot.

“There were a lot of swings taken in a difficult time by a lot of different people,” notes producer and Waypoint co-founder Ken Kao of the film ultimately getting to the starting line.

Finding a new actor to replace former star John Malkovich was a particularly challenging task.

“My team did this recon, where I knew where every white man over 60 years old was located,” quips producer and Waypoint partner Josh Rosenbaum of recasting antagonist Herr König, written as a 60-something-year-old German man. Eventually they went in a different direction, casting the much younger Dan Stevens in the role.

They also found new locations for the film, which follows Schafer’s Gretchen, who is mourning the loss of her mother when she moves to a Bavarian Alps resort run by Stevens’ Herr König. As she settles in with her father (Marton Csokas), his younger wife (Jessica Henwick) and her half-sister (Mila Lieu), Gretchen notices her half-sister is acting strangely. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a trench coat seems to be stalking Gretchen, all of which leads her to the discovery of a sinister plot.

The team declined to share the budget, but incentives for shooting in Germany made the project financially feasible. And though after opening Aug. 9 in theaters, Cuckoo did not reach the heights of fellow Neon horror title Longlegs, the Waypoint team says it is more than pleased with its $6.7 million haul.

“It’s a credit to Neon,” says Kao of taking a swing on the project, particularly “at a time where a lot of people were moving to streaming.” Waypoint has a producing and financing pact with Neon, which fully financed Cuckoo.

A high point for the team was seeing the film screened at Quentin Tarantino’s Vista Theatre in Los Feliz, where they played a 35 mm print (the feature was shot on film).

Now, as the film enjoys its digital release, Waypoint is developing Singer’s next feature. The German filmmaker burst on the scene with his film school thesis Luz, a 70-minute supernatural horror film. After Luz and Cuckoo, audiences might assume his third project will be a horror movie. But it’s unclear what genre he will be exploring, only that it’s said to be a step forward for the filmmaker.

“He’s much more of the kind of the classic auteurs who did a different type of film every time they had a crack at it,” says Rosenbaum.