Steven Soderbergh is not a director averse to variety. From the slick heists and capers of the Ocean’s movies and Logan Lucky, to the science-fiction of Solaris, the claustrophobic, paranoid thrills of Unsane and Kimi and the joyful seduction of Magic Mike, his is a filmography that spans all kinds of genres, settings and concepts. But his newest movie Presence might be the most high-concept of all – a haunted house drama told from the perspective of the ghostly entity itself.
Pulling off the ghost POV was challenging, with Soderbergh himself carrying the camera around the house, all shot on location in New Jersey. “Day to day, my job was literally to figure out how to now fall down or up the stairs,” he tells Empire. Presence is the director’s latest collaboration with screenwriter David Koepp, who also wrote 2022’s Kimi. Both are what Soderbergh says Koepp calls “box movies”, aka. films with some kind of restriction, be it time or location (Kimi largely took place in one setting) – and the pair have another in the works, too. “I pitched him one more idea that falls into the box category that I want him to write for me,” he says. “So hopefully he’s going to do that soon.”
That and Presence are not all that’s on Soderbergh’s upcoming roster though. His spy drama Black Bag, starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, is coming in March, and he’s hoping to turn his hand to something else that’s a little lighter in tone as well – if he can get the project out of the development stage. “It was a comedy designed to really provoke people and I had a fantastic cast put together, and nobody would touch it,” he explains. But the one genre we won’t be seeing a Soderbergh spin on any time soon? The Western. “I’m terrified of horses,” he admits. Neigh bother, Steven – sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate for now.
Read our full interview with Steven Soderbergh in Empire‘s February 2025 issue, on sale Thursday 19 December. Pre-order a copy online here. Presence hits UK cinemas on 24 January.