Following a long stint as a GQ editor and directing the 2017 short, “Trapeze, U.S.A.,” Mark Anthony Green makes his feature directorial debut with A24’s “Opus,” starring Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, and Stephanie Suganami.

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere fits somewhere between thriller and celebrity satire. The story follows pop star Moretti, played by Malkovich, who resurfaces after 30 years off the grid. He mysteriously invites a group of journalists and previous connections to a compound, where cultlike chaos slowly begins to unfurl.

“I think my approach to filmmaking so far has been kind of like two buckets,” Green told IndieWire. “There’s a bunch of different observations and things that I want to say about the world, curiosities that I have, takes, statements, whatever. Then in the other bucket, there are actual visual worlds that I want to spend time in, that I want to play around with, and create. So if one thing from one bucket seems like it would be serviced by the other thing in the other bucket and vice versa, then that to me feels like something to explore for an actual film.”

During his tenure at GQ, close friend Lionel Boyce snuck a screener of “The Bear” Season 1 to Green, and he immediately knew he wanted Ayo Edebiri to star in “Opus.” “We’ve always had great creative rapport,” Green said of casting Edebiri. “She read the script, we sat down, and we talked about it.”

“It always felt very familial-like,” he continued. “You know, friends, family, like safe — this is what I want to do with this film. That’s how our conversations were on the first day, and that’s how they were on the last day. I’m such a fan. I think she’s so, so talented, and I watch her in ‘Opus,’ and I’m just constantly seeing new things that she does and impressed by her performance. It’s one of the things just to see her in a different gear. I feel like there are a lot of reasons people should go see this film, but seeing Ayo in a different gear is worth $20 or $15 or whatever [your ticket is].”

With such a strong cast of film veterans, I was curious to see if Green had pitched anyone else for a role in the film. “I really wanted Nikki Giovanni, who’s my favorite poet and recently passed away,” he revealed.

“I had written the scene with Ayo and Young Mazino to be with her godmother, and Nikki was going to play herself. My dream was to put Nikki Giovanni in an A24 movie, and I chased that woman. I spoke to her partner. I sent them flowers — I was reading Nikki Giovanni this morning; She is truly [among the] top five writers that have had an effect on me in my life. So for my first film, I really wanted to put her in it, and then I heard from a mutual friend that her health wasn’t great, and that was the only thing that was going to make me chill out.”

Beyond the cast, the collaborators Green pulled together for this were astounding, even going as far as getting Nile Rodgers & The Dream to create original music for the project. “There was a point in time where they were working with Beyoncé [for ‘Cowboy Carter’], and then they were working with John [Malkovich] and I, and they were going back and forth, which I always thought was really funny.”

“I wish everybody that worked on ‘Opus’ got paid more, myself included,” Green said. “But nobody took more of a pay cut to what they usually get than Niles and Dream. They chose to do this purely for the creative challenge of it. Not only are they making a fraction of the money, but I [was] very demanding, in the studio with them at all hours of the night and being annoying. I really wanted the whole film to feel like a pop record.”

With a limited budget, Green and his crew managed to shoot the film in just 19 days in New Mexico. “I give so much credit to the local crew in New Mexico. I created a very, very fleshed-out, rigid game plan. The thing I’m the most gracious of is just how many people trusted me and went to battle with me to do this and the ambition of the film. We took a lot of really big swings with very little resources.”

With a movie that straddles genres and tones, Green previously said that he thought the term “elevated horror” “is bullshit.” “I’m 100% pro nerd,” he said, expanding on that sentiment. “I hate pretentious shit. ‘Silence of the Lambs’ is a masterpiece, ‘Saw’ is also incredible, but they’re both horror films. ‘Get Out’ is one of the best films since I’ve been on the planet. I guess I just don’t share the need to promote within the genre and it just feels like a promotion. It doesn’t feel like specification. It feels like promotion, and I don’t understand that.”

With all the recent discussion about fighting for longer theater exclusivity, most recently during Sean Baker’s winning speech at the Directors Guild Awards, Green was quick to jump in on the conversation. “I think Sean Baker is a genius,” Green said. “I’m so happy that I live in a world where Sean Baker is being celebrated. Go watch Sean Baker’s other films, ‘Starlet,’ in particular, is so, so good.”

“I made the film like a pop song. Experiencing it in a theater with people, with that sound, and other people’s energy and reactions, it’s like going to a concert, and I guarantee it will be one of the most fun theatrical experiences you’ll have this year,” Green said.

“Opus” releases in theaters on Friday, March 14 from A24. Watch the trailer here.