Director Bill Condon on The Good Liar and how to keep modern audiences engaged

From his career-changing Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar win for 1998's Gods And Monsters to the blockbuster success of his 2017 live-action Beauty And The Beast remake, director Bill Condon has crafted a filmography that can be hard to define. He’s tackled flashy musicals, dramatic biopics, and even orchestrated a vampire war in the two-part conclusion to the Twilight franchise. Condon’s latest work, The Good Liar, reunites him with frequent collaborator Sir Ian McKellen and pits him opposite Dame Helen Mirren in a modern-day mystery thriller that harkens back to Hitchcock. We recently had the privilege to sit down with Condon to discuss what he sees as the connective tissue between the genre-spanning films of his career. And, while avoiding spoiling any of The Good Liar’s twists and turns, he teased the movie’s crackling McKellen-Mirren chemistry and explained its Inglourious Basterds “cameo.” Condon also offered up a measured take on this fall’s hot Scorsese v. Marvel debate, which led to his thoughts on how to get audiences to the movie theater in an over-saturated content market.