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In an underwhelming era for feature comedies and a moment in indie film where exciting surprises are harder to come by, the Shitheads trio of Macon Blair, Dave Franco, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. is keeping the dream alive.
Premiering tonight at Sundance, The Shitheads marks writer-director Blair’s return to the festival on the heels of I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which won the Grand Jury Prize before going on to distribution through Netflix.
Deftly blending tones in the same vein as Blair’s earlier work, The Shitheads is, in producer-star Franco’s words, “this wild, relentless road trip movie” — a film full of “laugh-out-loud humor” and “shocking and violent set pieces,” where “every new chapter…is more unhinged than the last.”
The story follows Mark (Franco) and Davis (Jackson Jr.), two hopelessly unqualified screw-ups, who are hired to transport a wealthy teen to rehab. What should be an easy road trip explodes into a spiral of violence, chaos, and bad decisions, as the duo comes to recognize what a malevolent force they’re dealing with in Mason Thames’ Sheridan.
Even amidst its gross-out gags, drug trips, and life-or-death moments of suspense, The Shitheads is, at its heart, an endearing story about messy people finding their way along — somehow. Bolstered by confident writing and directing, and effortless chemistry between Franco and Jackson Jr. as the millenial odd couple duo, The Shitheads also benefits from standout performances from Kiernan Shipka and Nicholas Braun unlike anything you’ve seen them do before. Braun’s character, in particular — Pricka Bush Da Werewoof — will be hard to forget.
Ahead of its festival debut, Blair and his leads spoke with Deadline about the more than decade-long journey to bring The Shitheads to screens, the pitch to financiers on this project, tapping into Thames’ darker side following his hero roles in films like The Black Phone, and more.
DEADLINE: Macon, the seed of the idea for this film — involving the transport of troubled teens — came a while back in conversation with producer Alex Orr. What about this framework for a film resonated with you?
MACON BLAIR: It was these particular gentlemen that the producer, Alex Orr, knew. It wasn’t the job; it’s the fact that it was so unregulated. They had no training, no qualifications; they were just dudes that were turned loose to do this very sensitive thing. His suggestion was like, “That could be a fun premise for a road movie-type comedy,” and I have a soft spot for people who are, let’s say, not qualified, doing their best in situations. That’s just always a sweet spot for me. So, it wasn’t so much the job, as much as the guys who were out of their depth, trying to figure it out as they go, that was really appealing.
DEADLINE: Why do you think you have that sweet spot for the underqualified?
BLAIR: I think it’s just like, it’s good for drama and it’s good for comedy. There’s some types of movies where it’s all about the people are super-pros. They have skills, superpowers, a background that makes them uniquely qualified to do the thing, and those are fun too. But I’m just drawn to the kind that go in the other direction where they don’t have any of that and they still try to do it — and one way or another, they get through it, and it’s just messy along the way. I just find it endearing and charming, and it’s always good for laughs.
DEADLINE: You’ve compared watching this film to the experience of taking in “a nasty little rock’n’roll show.” What does that mean to you?
BLAIR: Setting aside thematics or even plot, I wanted the feeling of it to be fast and exciting and fun, but kind of dangerous, too. And so you’re having a good time. You like hanging out with these people; you want the best for them. But I wanted it to feel like a whirlwind, like you were in a mosh pit at a loud and noisy rock show. That was sort of the experience that I wanted people to come away from. I’ve had people ask questions in other contexts like, “What do you want people to take away from it?” And I don’t have a good answer for that. What I want them to to do is to feel energized and excited in the experience of sitting in the theater and watching it. I think a lot of that comes down to the performances that [Dave and O’Shea] bring to it and the other characters bring to it. And it’s partly jokes, it’s partly suspense, it’s partly gross-out gags. It’s kind of all of that together. But the cumulative experience is just meant to be, “Ah, that was fun. That was worth my $20 ticket.”
DEADLINE: There’s always a punk rock energy flowing through your work, as well as that of Jeremy Saulnier, your friend and frequent collaborator on projects like Blue Ruin. What is that about?
BLAIR: Jeremy and I grew up together outside of Washington, D.C. and Virginia in the ’80s and ’90s and everybody we knew was in a hardcore band. That was what we listened to, and that’s still what I listen to, especially when I’m writing, because it makes you want to go fast. So on some level, I think that finds its way into the movie. I wouldn’t say I sat down thinking, “Let’s make a punk rock movie” at all. But I think that rhythm and that sensibility and also that philosophy of, “F*ck it, we’re going to do it ourselves,” informed a lot of how this movie came together.
DEADLINE: O’Shea and Dave, what drew you to the project?
DAVE FRANCO: The main reason I wanted to do this film was to work with Macon. Ever since I saw the first movie he wrote and directed, I’ve been chasing him and begging him to do something with me. I truly think he’s a genius and has his own rhythm and style. He’s somehow able to combine genuine laugh-out-loud comedy with visceral violence and action: that’s not an easy combo to pull off.
Macon and I first talked about this project nine years ago. But at the time, we ultimately realized I was too old to play Sheridan and too young to play Mark, and so we amicably parted ways. Nearly a decade later, I reached out to Macon to check in about the status of the movie and told him, “If I can be of service in any way, I’d love to help get it made.” And so I came on board as a producer, and we pitched the project to a bunch of indie financiers, and eventually found the money.
O’SHEA JACKSON JR.: The first thing that caught my interest was Dave. Dave hit me and told me about the project and basically was like, “I think you could kill this.” We wanted to work together again. We had did some work together on the show The Now, and so it was a chance to work with Dave again. And when one of your friends is like, “Hey, dude, I think you could kill this,” it piques your interest. So, I’m going through it and trying to see what Dave saw, and the script was funny. It grabbed me, and also, it felt like something I hadn’t done before, acting-wise. It asked a lot of me, emotionally, that I haven’t done. So it was just another opportunity to show range, show versatility, and just further establish myself as an actor in this game. I always set out after Straight Outta Compton to find something different than what the last thing I did was, just so I can’t be put into a box, and I feel like this fit that perfectly.
FRANCO: In my mind, the only person who could play Davis was O’Shea. Like he said, we had the privilege of working with each other a handful of years ago on a Quibi project: R.I.P. Quibi. But we bonded instantly, and I just have such a deep respect for him, and I knew he had the range to play both sides of this character. O’Shea can be very sweet, sympathetic and loyal, but he’s shown that he can be explosive and unpredictable, as well. And he gets a chance to show his vulnerability in this film in a way that I’ve never seen on screen before: the man has layers.
DEADLINE: This film features some of the funniest depictions of drug use — and specifically, people messing with people hallucinating on drugs — that I’ve ever seen on screen. Talk about how you pulled these moments off.
BLAIR: There’s one line in there — it’s when Dave’s character has taken too much liquid marijuana and Sheridan looks at him and says, “Think about the dogs.” Some people are like, “I don’t get it,” and other people are like, “I’ve had a buddy do that to me.” Where they say something that’s just incorrect enough [in the context of converation], but not totally incorrect, and you’re suddenly totally disconnected from your place on the planet, and it’s so bewildering. That moment, I stole from a thing in high school where somebody did that to me, and it’s just like, “Wait, what did you say?” And then you get scared and everyone’s plotting against you and nothing is safe. I wanted to give that to Dave to play with.
DEADLINE: Between this film and The Studio, Dave, you’ve really shown off some chops in playing these kinds of scenes.
FRANCO: Yeah, I’ve become the druggie guy in a lot of people’s minds. I promise I don’t take hard drugs in my real life. [Laughs] But it’s very fun to play a character who does a lot of drugs. There’s something very liberating and freeing about being on drugs on camera, and I definitely wanted to differentiate it from my character in The Studio, who has high energy and almost this toxic positivity, where no matter what’s happening, he’s enjoying the moment, even when everyone else around him is in hell. In this film, it’s more of a paranoia that I’m playing, and a slight sickness, as well. Without giving anything away, there was a moment on set that I said, while we were filming, “This is maybe the funniest thing I will ever do on camera.”
DEADLINE: Mason Thames is such an authentic menace in this film — the role highlights a totally different side to his capabilities than we’ve seen before. How did you know, Macon, that he had to play Sheridan?
BLAIR: We had solidified Dave and O’Shea [to lead the film], and then Dave had recently done some work with Mason and suggested that we include him on the shortlist, so we did. I was aware of him from The Black Phone, but that was kind of the only thing I’d seen, and he was much younger in that one than this. So it was sort of like a fresh start. It was one of those things where you saw an audition and he just kind of crawled through the screen and you were like, “Oh f*ck.” You get kind of unsettled watching the audition, which was exactly the vibe. Because the idea, part of it, [is that] he is definitely the smartest one in the car on this trip and and a very worthy adversary for the two guys. It’s not going to be a case of like, “We’ll pack up the the hapless teenager and get him from point A to point B.” He’s somebody that they really have to contend with, and I felt like even at his very young age, he was able to convey that in a very short amount of time, and instantly everybody was very excited about him for this role. So credit to Dave for steering us his way.
FRANCO: I’d just worked with Mason on Regretting You and and he’s one of the most naturally gifted actors I’ve ever worked with. I truly think he’s incapable of having a false moment on screen, and up to this point in his career, he’s almost always played the hero, the the good guy. I was curious to see what his darker side might look like, and he delivered in such an incredible way. I just feel like Regretting You and The Shitheads will make a great double for anyone who wants to see Mason’s full range as an actor.
DEADLINE: Macon, did you have any specific filmic references in mind in making this film? The one that kept coming to mind for me while watching it was Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail starring a young Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and Randy Quaid.
BLAIR: Oh, yeah. No, no, no. That’s the number one. When Alex, the producer, and I started talking about this years ago, even before the script was done, we were thinking about how it would be pitched to people. And “The Last Detail with hard drugs” was definitely it. Not just the two-guys-with-one-prisoner of structure — that was a big part — but also the tone. Where there are moments that are funny, but as it goes on, it gets much more melancholy and kind of heartbreaking. And so what starts as a comedy doesn’t necessarily end up that way. That was a huge inspiration. We also talked a lot about Midnight Run and Repo Man.
DEADLINE: As previously alluded to, The Shitheads took some time to come together. Can you expand on your approach to talking through the film with financiers and how you locked down the financing?
BLAIR: We had let it sit for a while because we almost made it, it fell apart, and we felt like, let’s let the dust settle so it could feel fresh again. So a couple of years had passed. We got Dave on board as a cast member, but also as a producer, to help with the fundraising process. We also had Rough House Pictures, who are a great resource for dark comedy-type projects like this. And what we really led with was, it’s a straightforward comedy, it’s a road movie. You can expect a lot of laughs. It’s that kind of fun, see-it-with-a-crowd type of movie, and we kind of let the the the darker, more vulnerable, more troubling stuff, just let people discover that on their own, which ended up working out well. Because it’s better experienced than talked about. What was cool was that at the time, we connected with some financing partners and we had a particular amount of days to do it, and it was a tight schedule. It was not unreasonable, but we had a lot of locations and a lot of speaking parts, and so it was very tight and there was no wiggle room. And just early on there was this attitude of, you know what? We’re not going to let this be a thing to stress us out; we’re going to embrace that, and we’re going to move quickly. It was kind of like, we just we have to get the shot and move on. If we stay and and keep doing take after take, we’re not going to get the stuff later on in the day, so there was just this propulsive energy that I suspect you can see on the screen when when you’re watching it. So the tight schedule, I think, informed that and ended up being kind of a silver lining.
FRANCO: And Macon, tell me if I’m wrong, but in terms of how the script changed over the years, if anything, you just streamlined the story. Part of that was for budgetary reasons, but I genuinely think it made the movie better. You took out all of the fat, and it became this wild, relentless road trip movie that never takes its foot off the gas.
BLAIR: Exactly so. It got really boiled down. There was really only one scene in the movie that we cut out in the edit. Otherwise, everything we shot is in there because we had done all of that editing at the script phase. Kind of for schedule reasons, but also just creatively, it became like, if it’s not doing something very specific, get it out of there. And that was a great position to be in.
But yeah, you’re right. The structure of the story kind of remained the same. I think some of the ages of the characters might have changed a little bit and the nature of some of the action might have changed. But what happens to everybody and what they go through was just as it was 13 years ago.
DEADLINE: What do you think the appetite is in the marketplace for comedy right now? What is the vibe regarding comedy when sitting down with executives?
BLAIR: I would go into meetings and what I would say is, “People are desperate for comedies and there’s not enough comedies.” Now, do I know that to be true? No, I do not. I was making that up. But it felt right, and they seemed to nod their heads like that’s probably true, and we’ll see if it’s true. But that’s what I said.
DEADLINE: Your entire cast is great here. But Nicholas Braun is another clear standout, playing an unforgettable character. I won’t spoil anything, other than sharing the character’s name: Pricka Bush Da Werewoof. Talk about working with him.
BLAIR: I will say that when we almost made this movie in 2016 or ’17, Nick auditioned for that part back then, and it was to this day, the best audition I’ve ever seen in my life. He did the scene, he continued to improv the scene for about five minutes, in character, in costume. This was in his apartment. Then, with his camera still rolling, he walked outside and started walking around his neighborhood and interacting with strangers in real time, in the street, in character. And it was absolutely amazing.
I didn’t know him at the time; this was right before Succession popped off. And I was like, “Who is this?” And then the movie went away. So when it came back around this time, we knew for a variety of reasons — ages, finance, all sorts of stuff — we were going to be recasting. But that was one where I was like, “We should try to get him back.” Because I couldn’t let go of that audition.
FRANCO: Nick has a very pivotal scene in the film, and I remember talking to him after he shot that. He was saying how cathartic it felt because he had been thinking about that particular scene for nine years. And you can see see it in his performance. It’s just so lived in; it felt like something he needed to get out of his system, and it’s just so incredible to watch him in this role that’s different than anything he’s ever done.
JACKSON JR.: Nick definitely brought it. The days where he’s on set, it’s hard to ignore. I mean, he’s also a giant, but it is also hard to ignore. You know, once he gets out of the makeup chair, Nick is gone and Pricka is here. And I’ve done some wild films. I did Star Wars [Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi], which has a bunch of creatures all around you, and I’ve never seen nothing like Pricka Bush.
FRANCO: Another element that I love about Macon’s movies in general is that every character is unique and interesting, down to the smallest roles. They all deserve their own spinoff. I mean, I’d watched multiple seasons of Nick as Pricka Bush. But even the characters who have one or two lines, you’re fascinated and want to know more about them.
DEADLINE: What is the emotional reality of premiering a film at a festival like Sundance these days? How do you think about discovery in 2026, and what it takes for an indie film to succeed now?
JACKSON JR.: Well, number one, every premiere that I’ve gone to, I’ve been extremely nervous. I don’t watch the film before the premiere because I like to get the audience reaction in real time. Because if not, I’ll just sit there and pick myself apart and I can’t really enjoy it. When you have an audience, you have to let that loose a little bit because you see what works and what doesn’t. But I’ve missed premieres. I haven’t had a premiere in quite some time.
You know, I still trip off of when I have in-person meetings: things have changed so much. I just recently went to the premiere of Anaconda with with my father [Ice Cube], and I’m there just to support, but they called me out on the carpet to get the shot of me and my dad. And while we were standing there in front of the cameras, we were like, “Man, I really forgot how to do this for a second.”
I love indie projects because it puts a new set of eyes on you, and it really is where you show your skills off. It’s you and the camera in a lot of situations with an indie, and so I’m excited for it to be at Sundance at a time like this, when we lose Redford, and rest in peace to Reiner. It’s a weird time in movies. A movie like this is something that I hope people will get inspiration from and that spark will come back because they’re trying to take us completely out of theaters and things like that. So to have a premiere at Sundance like this, it’s something that I’m going to hold on to.
FRANCO: I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t have any expectations about anything that I’m in, and by having that mindset, when something does work, it’s a nice surprise. But when it doesn’t work, I’m not heartbroken because I didn’t have any expectations. That said, I have seen many cuts of this film, and I love this film. So going into Sundance, of course, I hope audiences respond to it. Of course, I hope we make a big sale. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t change anything about this movie, and so I can find peace in that.
DEADLINE: How do you see the next chapter in indie film? On the studio side, things are as unpredictable as they’ve ever been.
JACKSON JR.: You know, for those who don’t know, I’m a gamer. My PlayStation is right behind my computer, and the gaming industry has been very good to me. But yeah, it kind of reminds me of that because there’s a moment in the gaming industry right now where, if you look at the streamers and things like that, the indie projects are what they’re playing. You know, everybody’s waiting for Grand Theft Auto, but the big AAA game that they put this giant number into, they’re not scratching the the itch that audiences need. And I really think that it’s kind of mirroring that. Because there’s a lot of good stuff out there that the average Joe is not aware of because there’s no commercial during the playoffs or whatever it is. And I think people are starting to — whether that is them sitting on Netflix, and letting Netflix choose for them — but they’re finding these films and getting attached. So I think it’s a perfect time for a nice surge of indie films to show people why they love the movies and what we do.
FRANCO: I really think you have to make something unique that’s going to cut through the noise these days. I think about the film I had at Sundance last year, Together. That movie is batsh*t crazy, and we went in knowing that it was a risk. It was a huge swing, and if it didn’t work, it could be the end of our careers. But if it did, then it could potentially find an audience who who recognized that we were trying to do something different.
I think with this film, every new chapter in this story is more unhinged than the last, and there’s absolutely no way for audiences to predict where it’s going. There’s laugh-out-loud humor, shocking and violent set pieces, but there’s still a real beating heart underneath it all, and I just think it’s offering something that people haven’t seen in a while.
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