Woman of the Hour: Anna Kendrick explains the decision to make her directing debut with true crime film

Back in early 2022, it was announced that Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) was set to star in a true crime serial killer thriller called The Dating Game – and at that time, Watcher director Chloe Okuno was attached to direct the film. By the end of 2022, Okuno had vacated the director’s seat and Kendrick had decided to make her directing debut on the film. The finished product, titled Woman of the Hour, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, where JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray had the chance to watch it. You can read his 8/10 review at THIS LINK. Following the TIFF screening, the Netflix streaming service purchased the distribution rights for an estimated $11 million… and now, they’re ready to send the movie out into the world. Woman of the Hour will be streaming on Netflix as of October 18th – and during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kendrick explained how she ended up at the helm of the film.

Kendrick revealed that she had actually been attached to the project for two years before we ever heard about it. “As often happens with movies, it was just taking forever, and the pieces weren’t coming together. And then, way too quickly, out of nowhere, you have a start date. And in our case, we had a start date and no director. We spent maybe 48 hours trying to find somebody to jump on board quickly. And we were certainly not looking at first-time directors. The idea would be to find someone experienced enough to get $2 and a roll of duct tape and make a movie. I just found myself having this absolutely terrifying thought — it was physically bubbling up, and I kept trying to shove it back down — which was like, ‘Well, what if I pitched myself to direct the movie?’ … I can’t think of any movie of mine that, if the beginning was around the corner and we didn’t have a director, I would’ve raised my hand. I think there was something about the movie overall that I found compelling. I was aware that while I liked the character, I was way more interested in the movie as a whole. And of course, the whole two years, I’m sitting there going, ‘Well, if it were my movie, this is how I’d do it. But it’s not, so it’s not my call.’ I just got so excited about the idea of taking this script that I loved so much and shaping it in the way that I saw it.” She said she put together a “very haphazard” pitch and presented herself as a potential director. “And then suddenly, I was interviewing casting directors and production designers and feeling as terrified as I’ve ever been about, frankly, anything. I spoke to Brittany Snow on the phone, and she, in a very role-reversal way of our relationship, gave me the most casual pep talk, which was literally in a very flat voice: ‘You’ll get on set, and you’ll know what to do.’ And it was just like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ That’s usually how I find myself talking to her, and I think I was expecting this flowery, long pep talk, and she so cut to the chase that I was like, ‘Okay, damn girl. I’ll just figure it out, I guess.’“

Scripted by Ian MacAllister McDonald, Woman of the Hour is based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of Cheryl Bradshaw, who was a bachelorette on the hit 70s TV matchmaking show The Dating Game and chose handsome and funny bachelor number one, Rodney Alcala. But behind Alcala’s charming façade was a deadly secret: he was a psychopathic serial killer. Here’s the official logline: The stranger-than-fiction story of an aspiring actress in 1970s Los Angeles and a serial killer in the midst of a yearslong murder spree, whose lives intersect when they’re cast on an episode of The Dating Game. McDonald’s script was featured on the 2017 Black List, an annual survey of the most-liked unproduced scripts, under the title Rodney & Sheryl.

Kendrick is joined in the cast by Daniel Zovatto, Tony Hale, Nicolette Robinson, Pete Holmes, Autumn Best, Kathryn Gallagher, and Kelley Jakle.

Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz, and Raphael Margule produced Woman of the Hour, with Kendrick serving as an executive producer alongside Stuart Ford, Zach Garrett, Miguel A. Palos Jr., Ian Mcdonald, Joe Penna, Matthew Helderman, Luke Taylor, Paul Barbeau, Sean Patrick O’Reilly, Andrew Deane, and Stephen Crawford. Lorelle Lynch, Chris Abernathy, and Tracy Rosenblum co-produced.

Are you interested in seeing what Anna Kendrick has done with Woman of the Hour? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.