'All Fun and Games' Directors Say 'Nobody's Seen Asa Butterfield Like This Before' (Exclusive)
Co-director Ari Costa made it clear that Butterfield's terrifying role is "not Ender's Game."
Sex Education star Asa Butterfield appears in the new horror movie All Fun and Games, which finds the actor stretching his horror chops. In the film, Butterfield plays Marcus Fletcher, a Salem, Massachusetts teenager who becomes possessed by a vindictive spirit hellbent on payback. Over the course of the movie, we watch as Butterfield's mild-mannered demeanor turns violently chaotic, as the demon takes hold of him.
Ahead of the film's release, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with All Fun and Games co-writers and directors Eren Celeboglu and Ari Costa. During the conversation, they shared what it was like to work with Butterfield and offered some insight into his approach to the role. "He had an absolute blast and he was a true gentleman," Costa said of the young actor. "He was there on time every day, setting the tone for the rest of the actors. He was amazing."
"Even in our early meetings that we had with Asa beforehand, just to talk about the demon and talk about the mythology, he was trying to encapsulate who the demon was," Costa continued. "We had another actress, a local actress in Winnipeg called Summer Howell who actually played the demon. That is a woman wearing a prosthetic mask of a boy that's been tortured. She was just extremely athletic and could do all the things we wanted to do."
Recalling how Butterfield and Howell worked in unison to hammer out their joint depiction of the demon, Costa shared, "They got together and were like, 'All right, what if the demon walks this way because his toe's been cut off?' And, 'What if the demon talks like this because his neck's been slit?' So, he really tried to embody the demon. Because the demon is a child, you could see some of that mischievous glint in Asa's eyes, and he smiles and the way he talks. He very much was game to try and do anything."
Celeboglu then added, "Also, the casting process with him was so lovely because — I'm going to totally talk out of school here, but I think it speaks to Asa how cool Asa is — he was in Hugo when he's 9, right? Now he's in his mid-twenties, so there's this machine around him of offers and you can't read the part and this, that, and the other thing. But when we started talking with him, it was like, 'Hey, do you want to just read and play around?'"
The filmmaker continued, "He just came to life and it was one of those things where he was like, 'Wow.' He had so much fun, just, even before he agreed to do it, playing around in the role. Great actors love to act, and both Ari and I knew, we were like, 'This guy is the real deal because it's not about all the stuff, all the other stuff.' He's so about figuring out, like Ari was saying, his way into the role, making it real. He would just bring so many ideas. He came so prepared. All of our actors were, where we were just dialing things with them because they were so amazing."
Finally, Costa asserted, "Nobody's seen Asa like this before. Honestly, it's not Otis from Sex Ed. It's not Ender's Game. We haven't seen Asa do this." All Fun and Games is now available to own or rent from digital retailers such as Prime Video and VUDU.