'All Fun and Games' Directors Reveal Russo Brothers 'Biggest Creative Contributions' for New Horror Movie (Exclusive)

All Fun and Games, an intense new horror film that just arrived on digital, follows a group of siblings and friends as they try to survive being tormented by a demon they accidentally unleashed. The movie is directed by Eren Celeboglu and Ari Costa — both naming their feature film directorial debut — and is executive produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, who are well known for their work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to chat with Celeboglu and Costa about the brutal flick, and they shared with us the "biggest creative contributions" the Russo Brothers made to the new film.

In the movie, Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things), Asa Butterfield (Sex Education), and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth (Disney's live-action Pinocchio remake) play three Salem, Massachusetts siblings who are forced to stare death in the face — literally — when one of them discovers a cursed knife that holds a terrifying evil. Additional cast members include Laurel Marsden (Ms. Marvel), Kolton Stewart (Locke and Key), and Annabeth Gish (Mayfair Witches), who plays the kids' mother. "When asked how the Russos — whom both Celeboglu and Costa have worked with for years — approached their role as producers, Costa explained, "I think, because of how active they are as producers at their company, AGBO, and how they love to sort of herald and find up-and-coming talent and just really great in that capacity. But I do remember initially telling Joe, 'Yeah, we got 20 days to shoot this movie.' And he was like, 'That's going to be tough.'"

"He was great about it," Costa continued. "He's like, 'Okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to shoot in a bit of a verite style, 21 Grams meets Kids... You're going to have two cameras." Some of that stuff fell by the wayside, but he was just trying to set us up for success as much as possible because their motto — and this is very obvious but it bears repeating — is you can only make the movie with what you bring into the edit."

"So, [we tried] to capture as much footage as possible to build out our sequences," he went on to share. "You need that a lot for some of these horror films. I think tonally, a lot of times first-time directors struggle with tone. So, just trying to be there for us in that way and just obviously their eyes and ears on every step of the process was sort of invaluable."

Celeboglu then added, "I think honestly the two biggest creative contributions that they made were... the Salem backstory was not at the forefront when we wrote the script, but we love this idea of this parallel of these witches in Salem were just sort of women struggling to support their families. They were single mothers who were being persecuted by old white men. We love those echoes of Annabeth's character and Daniel the demon is Joe's character and vice versa."

"Joe really said, 'No, no, no. Let's bring all that up. Make that forefront. Be specific, because specific is what's relatable. Specific is more universal.' That was Joe, along with the knife," Celeboglu continued. "He was like, 'We should have a relic. We should have an iconic symbol for the demon, for the game.'" The filmmaker later shared, "That was really Joe and Anthony just being super supportive and really telling us to lean into, to mine, what we already had." 

All Fun and Games is now available to own or rent from digital retailers such as Prime Video and VUDU. Stay tuned to PopCulture for more of our conversation with Celeboglu and Costa!