How Some “Very Creepy Shrek Memes” AirDropped to Producers Led to Thriller ‘Drop’

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Three years back, while on vacation in Italy, the creators of the upcoming Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes thriller titled Drop found the inspiration for their story. This chilling tale revolves around a widowed mother who encounters trouble during her first date when she starts getting ominous, mysterious messages on her phone.

During their meal, Cameron Fuller and Sam Lerner found themselves in a bustling restaurant when someone began sending inappropriate Shrek memes via AirDrop to Sam’s girlfriend, Olivia Sui.

Or:

While having dinner, both Cameron Fuller and Sam Lerner were at a crowded restaurant. Suddenly, strange Shrek memes started appearing on the screen of Sam’s girlfriend, Olivia Sui, through AirDrop transmission.

Both sentences convey the same information but are worded differently to maintain natural flow and easy readability.

For the entire night, we were trying to identify the mysterious individual, yet they kept appearing and we couldn’t pinpoint them. Our dinner was centered around tracking down this person responsible for the actions. We trailed the person we believed to be the culprit to the pool area where we could block their AirDrop signal with ours, but it wasn’t them. In the end, we never discovered who the individual was, but this incident led to the creation of a movie.”

Fuller, who co-produced the film with Michael Bay and his father Brad Fuller, mentioned this during the Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday when speaking with The Hollywood Reporter.

The iPhone’s AirDrop feature lets you send photos and files to nearby Apple devices without needing their phone numbers. As executive producer Lerner reminisced, “I was sipping wine and thought, ‘This would make a fantastic movie idea.’ It was the best thing that ever happened when someone used AirDrop on us.

Upon arriving home, they contacted writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, previous collaborators with Lerner on the 2018 horror movie “Truth or Dare.” This conversation led to the creation of an ominous AirDrop assault scenario unfolding in a bustling restaurant during a first date.

Meghann Fahy plays the lead role of Violet, who is out on a date with Brandon Sklenar’s character Henry. Meanwhile, her sister takes care of her little boy at home. However, harmless AirDropped jokes between them quickly take a sinister turn as messages demand that Violet murder her date or risk losing her son’s life.

Fahy, who has made a name for herself in popular shows like “The White Lotus” and “The Perfect Couple,” dived into the thriller genre for the first time with this project. She expressed her enthusiasm by saying, “I found it fascinating, I’d love to explore it further. I gained a lot of insights. I now have a greater appreciation for what truly goes into even the most seemingly effortless scenes – it turns out, they require immense skill and dedication.

Additionally, she discussed the influences behind the movie and mentioned how during her chats with director Christopher Landon, it seemed distinctly reminiscent of the early 2000s. They referenced “Red Eye” naturally, but also mentioned “Speed” and “Panic Room”. These films have a unique quality where they seem to unfold in real-time within a confined space, allowing us to get acquainted with the characters and follow them along.

Drop hits theaters on Friday.

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2025-04-09 21:25