Two years ago, Australian YouTube stars Danny and Michael Philippou triumphantly moved to filmmaking with their horror hit Talk to Me. Now, another Australian YouTuber, Michael Shanks, is following in their bloodied footsteps with his own horror film. Together is the brainchild of Shanks, who wrote and directed the movie after notching up over 65 million views for his shorts and a web series on YouTube.
The film stars Americans Dave Franco (The Disaster Artist) and Alison Brie (Promising Young Woman), who are married in real life, as a dysfunctional couple who have a supernatural encounter after moving to the countryside.
- Shanks shot Together in Melbourne, where he lives, as his feature film debut after a successful YouTube career.
- The film will open in cinemas internationally in July and August, with Sydney Film Festival announcing its opening night screening in June.
- Shanks expressed his excitement and gratitude at the festival selection, saying he was “overwhelmingly happy” and “jazzed”.
A prominent deal has been struck for the film, with American distributor Neon paying over $US15 million ($23.3 million) for world rights. This figure far exceeds the film’s budget. Variety praised the film as “a squishy, fleshy, scream-worthy body horror movie”, while The Hollywood Reporter called it “a horror movie with more bone-crunching contortions, sticky goop and subcutaneous disturbance than you could dream of.”
The script for Together sat in a drawer for years after Shanks wrote it. It wasn’t until another one of his scripts, hotel hotel Hotel Hotel, was included on the Black List, an annual list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, in 2021 that the script for Together was taken out and circulated. Shanks said he was inspired to revisit his script after the success of Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel. “Riding off the heat from that script I got set up on a random meeting with Dave Franco to meet generally,” Shanks said. “I’d been a big fan of a horror film that he’d made called The Rental, which Alison is also in.”
| High school | Discovering YouTube |
| YouTube | Success with shorts and web series, giving him confidence to keep creating |
| Screen Australia program | Working briefly on Foxtel sketch show The Slot, and being part of the Skip Ahead program |
Shanks said he felt a kinship with the philippou brothers, whose second film, Bring Her Back, is opening in cinemas next month. They were both part of the same YouTube and Screen Australia program Skip Ahead, designed to teach creators the skills to make longer-form work. The Philippou brothers were also briefly involved with Foxtel sketch show The Slot. Shanks expressed his admiration for the Philippou brothers, whose film Talk to Me was a huge success. The success of Talk to Me was inspiring to Shanks, who said there was a “burgeoning new wave of young exciting horror creators out of Australia.”
When asked if he was nervous about releasing his first film, Shanks replied, “Having been to the opening night of Sydney and Melbourne film festivals, I always dreamed to have a film open one ‘and bring Mum along and say, ‘Mum, I’m not crazy. I did it’.”
Shanks’ mum, who attended the Sundance premiere, said “I didn’t hate it. I thought it was quite good,” after Shanks thanked her in his introduction for flying across the world to watch the film. Shanks joked that this was high praise from his mum, whose favorite genre of movie is Judi Dench. Together will be released in cinemas internationally in July and August.
