Interview: Scooter Corkle (The Friendship Game)

THE FRIENDSHIP GAME stars Peyton List (“Cobra Kai”), Brendan Meyer (“The OA”), Kelcey Mawema (To All the Boys I’ve Loved franchise), Kaitlyn Santa Juana (“The Flash”) and Dylan Schombing (“Watchmen”). The film was written by Damien Ober (“The OA”) and directed by Scooter Corkle (Hollow in the Land).

SYNOPSIS: The Friendship Game follows a group of teens as they come across a strange object that tests their loyalties to each other and has increasingly destructive consequences the deeper into the game they go.

Hi Scooter, how are you?

Scooter- Hi Janel, doing good. You’ve got a little friend in the backseat.

Yes, that’s Bella.

I loved The Friendship Game. It was as if you were giving us a look at our own lives. It was a fascinating, psychological movie. You feel for these characters and it’s this psychological mindf*ck. How did the idea manifest for you?

Scooter- It manifested from Damien Ober’s brain. A good horror movie or an elevated genre movie comes from a place of character, and a person place. That character then becomes the source of the horror. The fact that these teenagers are leaving high school to go to university and their splitting up… When you’re in high school, your friends are everything, they’re your lifeline to the world. The approach to the film was, what if it was life and death? So, for you to feel that it was psychologically hitting you, that’s what we were aiming for.

I found the box interesting. It hits you right away with this Pandoras Box and I felt a tad bit of Hellraiser in there. Were you inspired by Hellraiser with this game box/sphere?

Scooter- We’ve had the Hellraiser comparison a lot and we do like it. There are tropes we were playing with, and the idea is we sort of lure the audience in with the tropes so they think they understand what the movies going to be and then we sort of push against those tropes. You don’t where you are anymore, and the movie feels different. Hellraiser is a “be careful what you wish for” kind of box, and we leaned into that. I love Hellraiser, and the fact that we get that comparison.

I thought about the aspects of this movie and the cast is great. What was it like preparing the cast for such heavy material?

Scooter- We wanted to approach it as a drama, it is about the characters and all the horror comes from the characters.

Thank you so much, Scooter. It was awesome talking with you. The Friendship Game is an awesome film.

Scooter- Thank you.