Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Bad Times at the El Royale is a 2018 American neo-noir thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Drew Goddard. The film stars Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, and Chris Hemsworth. The hyperlink-style film follows six strangers and an employee at the El Royale, a hotel located along the California–Nevada border, whose secrets intersect on a night in the late 1960s. The film explores themes of morality, faith, and redemption, with the state border and other visual elements symbolizing the concept of right and wrong.

Goddard began writing the spec script for the film in November 2016, and compiled a list of songs into his screenplay. After telling major studios to avoid buying the script if they could not buy the licenses for each piece of music, he sold it to 20th Century Fox in March 2017. Principal photography began on January 29, 2018, with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, and concluded on April 6. The El Royale hotel was built entirely on a studio set in Burnaby, under the supervision of production designer Martin Whist, who had envisioned designing a perfectly symmetrical hotel. During post-production, editing was completed by Lisa Lassek and the musical score was composed by Michael Giacchino. The marketing campaign for the film included posters, trailers, and television advertisements, stylized to evoke nostalgia for the noir genre and to make it stand out against other films in theaters.

Bad Times at the El Royale premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on September 22, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 12. The film underperformed at the box office, grossing $31.8 million against its $32 million production budget. It received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, who praised Giacchino's score, performances of the cast, and McGarvey's cinematography, but criticized its pacing, runtime, character beats, and Goddard's writing. At the 45th Saturn Awards, the film received five nominations, Best Writing for Goddard, Best Actor for Bridges, Best Supporting Actor for Pullman, Best Supporting Actress for Erivo, and won for Best Thriller Film.