Dev Patel makes his feature directorial debut with Monkey Man and is hoping his first film behind the camera won’t be his last.
Patel wrote, directed, produced and stars in the Universal action-thriller, which follows a young man who sets out on a journey to hunt down a group of corrupt leaders responsible for his mother’s death, becoming a savior of the poor and powerless people they torment along the way.
At the Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, Patel told The Hollywood Reporter that he became “a reluctant writer and then a sort of reluctant director” on the project after he pitched it to previous collaborator Neill Blomkamp to direct and Blomkamp told the actor he should helm it himself because of his attachment to the material.
“There were some incredible people that pushed me into this director’s seat, and once I was there, I didn’t look back,” Patel continued. “It was by any means necessary I was going to birth this dream so I really love it, and I would love to do it again if I was so lucky.”
Sikandar Kher, who co-stars in the film, sang Patel’s praises on the carpet, saying “you don’t know that he’s a first-time director.”
“He really lets you be. It’s the communication, the way he talks to you. If there’s a note, it doesn’t feel like a note. He lets you fly, lets you spread your wings, and that’s when the magic happens, when you can really get something that might be special, and he gives you that liberty and that freedom and he loves you, he loves his actors,” Kher added. “He’s going to direct so much more, I hope he does.”
Actor Makarand Deshpande also noted, “He was there almost physically getting your appearance right, from the physical detail to the emotional detail. I would completely give credit entirely for my performance to Dev, he just got me there.”
The film is produced by Jordan Peele, who saw it and stepped in to acquire it via his Monkeypaw Productions (which has a deal with Universal) from Netflix, believing it deserved a theatrical release rather than streaming.
Pointing to Peele as “someone who’s kind of broken out of the mold of what he did with his amazing comedy show and became this kind of filmmaker,” Patel said, “not only did he see that sort of evolution in me as an artist but he understood the strength of using genre to talk about more interesting, deeper things — societal issues and using it as a sort of Trojan horse. He came in with the might of Universal and kind of took us from being this thing that was brushed under the carpet to putting us back on the mantelpiece, so I owe him a great deal.”
Monkey Man hits theaters on Friday.
Ryan Fish contributed to this report.