Daniel Radcliffe eyes directorial debut

Speaking at a Zurich Film Festival masterclass, British actor Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that he’d love to try directing a film soon.

“I would love to direct. I would like to that to happen within the next few years, ideally. I’m writing some things at the moment. Some producers are interested,” he said, “I really want to direct, I think I would be good… I hope I would be!”

He joked he would make something “super weird” as his directorial debut, after choosing a series of unusual roles in his post-Harry Potter career.

Radcliffe was in Zurich presenting his two latest films, Imperium directed by Daniel Ragussis and Swiss Army Man directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

Jungle

He also spoke about his next film, Jungle, which he shot earlier this year in Colombia.

“It’s directed by Greg McLean who directed Wolf Creek so it’s got a lot of horrifying moments even though it’s not a horror movie,” the 27-year-old actor explained.

“I play a guy called Yossi Ghinsberg, it’s a true story,” he said, about Ghinsberg and three other guys (played by Alex Russell, Joel Jackson and Thomas Krestschmann) seeking adventure by going into the “real jungle” of the Bolivian Amazon.

“A number of things happen when they get in there, and then Yossi gets split off from the rest of the group, and he was left alone in the Amazon rainforest for three weeks,” Radcliffe explained. “And he was not a survivalist, he was not Bear Grylls, he had no training. It’s about his struggle.”

Radcliffe quipped: “It’s like The Revenant but humid.”

Discussing how he chooses roles, the actor said: “The core of it is originality. I also love magical realism in books and it’s a term we don’t use in film very much, we put everything in a fantasy box. But Horns is magical realism, Swiss Army Man is completely magical realism. That’s something I read a lot of and I’m attracted to it in film.

“Because it’s a film, we don’t have to be ‘real life.’ That’s the joy of it, we can do whatever we like. Swiss Army Man is a testament to the fact that you can literally write a film about whatever you like. If it’s good enough it doesn’t matter. If you can write a film where somebody farts across the water like a Jet Ski, you just have to justify it and it can work.”

Radcliffe has also appeared this year as a bratty British tech tycoon in Now You See Me 2. “I thought it was kind of a rite of passage for a British guy to play a bad guy in an American movie. Tick that box. And also he was a fun bad guy, he was petulant and bratty like a bunch of guys I went to school with.

“Secondly the cast of those movies is unbelievable,” Radclife continued. “I’m a huge fan of so many of those people, especially Michael Caine…I got the chance to do scenes with him and Mark Ruffalo.”