Meet The Director: Chris Columbus

13 hours ago

Here’s what to expect from Netflix’s film adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club, according to its legendary director

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Ahead of his highly anticipated film adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, C&TH sits down with legendary film director Chris Columbus.

Chris Columbus On The Thursday Murder Club

From Home Alone to Harry Potter to Percy Jackson, Chris Columbus has directed a plethora of hugely beloved, widely acclaimed and smashingly successful films in his time. And while he may be an all-American filmmaker – born in Pennsylvania, raised in Ohio and educated at NYU’s Tisch film school – his next project is quintessentially British: a film adaptation of Richard Osman’s hit cosy crime novel, The Thursday Murder Club.

‘I’m very proud of the film,’ Columbus tells C&TH. ‘It’s truly the best cast I’ve worked with since the Potter films. The picture is a faithful adaptation of the book, yet it will still be a thrilling, hilarious and moving experience for those who haven’t read the novel. It’s a very special movie and I can’t wait to share it with the world.’

Sir Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Osman, Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie & Chris Columbus on the set of The Thursday Murder Club at the very beginning of filming

An instant best-seller, while Osman’s debut novel hit the shelves in September 2020, film execs were already working on bringing it to the screen, predicting the almighty enthusiasm readers would have for his work. This is far from an overstatement: after selling 45,000 copies in its first three days on sale, The Thursday Murder Club shifted almost 90,000 more copies between September and 19 December, making it the UK’s very first debut novel to sit at the top of the Christmas book charts in history.

Like Potter (of which Columbus directed the first two films), this already-beloved IP attracted a stellar coterie of actors to the picture. ‘The cast is incredible, and everyone from Helen Mirren to Pierce Brosnan deliver career high performances,’ Columbus says. He began by working ‘very closely’ with Osman, he says, the duo toiling to craft ‘a filmgoing experience that mirrors the whirlwind of emotions they experienced when reading the novel’.

‘And our audience gets to see their favorite characters come to life,’ Columbus says. ‘I believe Helen, Pierce, Ben and Celia were born to play these roles. It’s a very immersive movie filled with laughs and suspense. And there’s a surprising moving quality to the film. You’ll find yourself choked up and wiping away tears by the end.’

Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren & Pierce Brosnan in The Thursday Murder Club. (Giles Keyte/Netflix)

Set in a peaceful retirement village in rural England, The Thursday Murder Club centres on four unlikely friends – a former spy, nurse, psychiatrist and union leader – who meet up every week to puzzle over unsolved murders. But when a brutal murder takes place right on their doorstep, the quartet finds themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Beyond that central quartet – played by Hollywood greats Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie – Columbus was also ‘able to work with some of my favorite actors in the world,’ he tells C&TH. ‘People like David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Richard E. Grant, Naomi Ackie and Daniel Mays’. For that reason, he counts ‘literally coming to work every morning and getting to work with this amazing cast’ as his highlight on the project. ‘Watching their performances every day was like a master class in acting. I loved every minute of it. And it shows onscreen.’

Henry Lloyd Hughes & Helen Mirren in The Thursday Murder Club. (Giles Keyte/Netflix)

‘Helen Mirren set the tone,’ he adds looking back. ‘She created a warm, inviting environment that immediately made every actor in our company feel welcome,’ Columbus says. ‘Unburdened by tension or anxiety, the actors had the opportunity to perform with total freedom.

‘That’s not saying each day was a walk in the park,’ he adds. ‘There were tough scenes, emotional scenes that pushed the limits and boundaries of what one may expect from your standard procedural murder mystery.’

In production as early as March 2020, filming finally commenced in June 2024, wrapping in September so post-production could get underway ahead of the August 2025 release date. But ‘the real wrap party happened a few weeks before we actually stopped production,’ Columbus tells us. ‘I had an opportunity to have an intimate dinner with the cast, Richard Osman and his wife Ingrid at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, London’s River Café. There was incredible food, wine and three nonstop hours of laughter.

‘It didn’t feel like the traditional wrap of a film,’ Columbus adds. ‘It felt more like a celebration of the beginning of our work together on many more of these movies.’