Dan Gilroy Says Idea Of ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ Was Born After ‘Superman Lives’ Failure

Over the weekend, filmmaker Dan Gilroy premiered his upcoming Netflix Original film, “Velvet Buzzsaw” at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, and John Malkovich, ‘Buzzsaw’ is one of the most-anticipated films of the entire festival and focuses on the idea of art versus commercial products. And as revealed in a new interview, Gilroy’s idea for the film comes from a personal experience he had working on a film you wouldn’t expect – “Superman Lives.”

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In a new interview with EW, the filmmaker explains how the seeds for “Velvet Buzzsaw” were planted during his time on the failed Tim Burton-directed ‘Superman’ film.

“For a year and a half, 24 hours a day, we were all going full force [on ‘Superman Lives’],” Gilroy says. He explains that ultimately Warner Bros. pulled the plug on the project “because the budget was too hot.”

After being devastated by the late cancellation of the project, Gilroy says he went to a beach in Santa Monica. “I go, ‘Wow, I just spent a year and a half. Nothing I wrote is gonna ever be seen,’” he says. “I was looking at the waves and I was like, ‘I might as well come down and write words in the sand and have the waves just wash them away.’”

Interestingly, this is a scene that is used in ‘Buzzsaw,’ where Malkovich does a similar thing at a beach.

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Gilroy continues, “I suddenly thought, ‘It doesn’t matter. I am creating something as much for myself as for other people and I worked with people who appreciated and saw what I had done and I got the chance to create.’ I swore to myself then that one of the guiding precepts that I was gonna follow was that it didn’t matter, ultimately, the number of people who saw or the level of commercial success. [Art is] something I create for myself. I need to create something that is relevant to me that bears some world view that people may resonate with.”

“I’m saying in Velvet Buzzsaw,” he concludes, “that art is more than a commodity and let’s not forget it.”

It’s hard to imagine that ‘Buzzsaw,’ which is a thriller about paintings that may be imbued with evil and causing the deaths of those around them, would have any connection to a failed superhero film, but here we are.

“Velvet Buzzsaw” debuts on Netflix on February 1.