Scarlett Johansson, Rian Johnson, Chloé Zhao & Derek Cianfrance On Getting Actors In The Zone & More – Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF

Have you ever pulled a Terrence Malick and ripped up your shot list for the day? How do you get an experienced thespian like June Squibb to the place where you need them?

We canvassed such topics and more at Deadline and the Directors Guild of America’s first the Art of Directing panel at the Toronto International Film Festival, where we caught up with an Oscar pedigree of multi-hyphenates including 2x Oscar winner Chloe Zhoe, 2x Oscar nominee Rian Johnson, Oscar nominee Derek Cianfrance and 2x Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson, the latter who is making her feature directorial debut this season with Sony Pictures Classics Eleanor the Great on Sept. 26.

Derek Cianfrance at the Deadline Studio during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival Josh Telles for Deadline

In regard to tearing up a shot list for the day on set and going experimental, for Cianfrane, whose Channing Tatum-Kirsten Dunst feature Roofman just world premiered at TIFF and comes out on Oct. 10 via Paramount/Miramax, yes, he’s actually done it.

“I had 1,224 storyboards for Blue Valentine because I had spent 12 years trying to make the movie,” he told us, “Then when the time came to shoot the movie, I threw them away, of course. I didn’t want to be stuck to pictures. I wanted to find the new ones.”

Roofman follows the true story of Jeffrey Manchester, a spree robber who use to drill into the roofs of McDonalds and haul off with cash. The movie follows how Manchester hid out in a Toys ‘R Us in North Carolina and had a romance with a clerk. The movie is 88% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with critics coming away from TIFF.

Scarlett Johansson, Rian Johnson, Chloé Zhao & Derek Cianfrance On Getting Actors In The Zone & More – Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF

Rian Johnson at the Deadline Studio during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival Josh Telles for Deadline

When it comes to directing mentors, particularly in regards to their approach with actors, Johansson says it’s her Iron Man filmmaker, Jon Favreau, the actress admiring how he could be “different things to different people” during production.

“We had Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell (on the set of Iron Man 2). The actors really have different ways of working, and some pretty extreme and, and I said to him, ‘How do you do it? How do you know how to talk to everybody?”

She adds, “He said, ‘I really cater to each actor individually and observe what they need; what kind of relationship they respond best to.’ It’s sort of like being a therapist in a way was his way of putting it. I just thought that was really extraordinary.”

Scarlett Johansson, Rian Johnson, Chloé Zhao & Derek Cianfrance On Getting Actors In The Zone & More – Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF

Scarlett Johansson at the Deadline Studio during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival Josh Telles for Deadline

Eleanor the Great follows Squibb as the title protag, who after losing her best friend, moves to New York to be with her family. There she befriends a young female journalist university student and tells her tale about her life — but it’s not Eleanor’s, rather her late friends. Great misunderstandings ensue. The movie had its world premiere at Cannes.

Johnson told us that even though it’s his third Knives Out movie with Daniel Craig as detective Benoir Blanc in Wake Up Dead Man, in which he is thrusted into solving a Catholic priest’s murder, the 007 actor always “has to relearn” the character’s southern accent for each film.

“Which is good because he doesn’t want to just be doing the impression,” says Johnson, “so, it’s a whole new process each time.” Johnson explained that in the beginning, Craig listened to esoteric recordings of people with different southern accents until he found Benoit’s. Wake Up Dead Man

is 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and getting a theatrical release on Nov. 26 before its drop on Netflix on Dec. 12.

“Casting is 70%-80% of the work,” says Nomadland Oscar winner Zhao. On her latest British period romance drama, Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal and Jesse Buckley, the filmmaker tells us that she doesn’t rehearse scenes, rather “we do a lot of somatic work in prep. We do dream work, we do active imagination, we do tantric polarity workshops. Our goal is to try to connect who they are as an individual as a person today in their unconscious to the unconscious of Shakespeare.”

Scarlett Johansson, Rian Johnson, Chloé Zhao & Derek Cianfrance On Getting Actors In The Zone & More – Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF

Chloé Zhao at the Deadline Studio during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival held at BISHA Hotel on September 05, 2025 in Toronto, Canada.

Hamnet, from Focus Features, tells the story about how William Shakespeare became inspired to write his great play Hamlet, the backstory being quite tragic. The movie opens in limited theaters on Nov. 27 and stands at 89% fresh on RT with critics.

Says Zhao “My job is to create and use enough tools from old times and new ones to give them the space to make that connection.”

Anthony D'Alessandro, Derek Cianfrance, Chloé Zhao, Rian Johnson, Scarlett Johansson at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival held at the BISHA Hotel on September 05, 2025 in Toronto, Canada.

Derek Cianfrance, Chloé Zhao, Rian Johnson, Scarlett Johansson at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival held at the BISHA Hotel on September 05, 2025 in Toronto, Canada.

Rian Johnson, Scarlett Johansson at the Deadline & DGA TIFF Panel & Reception during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival held at the BISHA Hotel on September 05, 2025 in Toronto, Canada.