How Wolfs director staged a Brad Pitt, George Clooney movie reunion (exclusive)

Jon Watts is trading in spiders for animals of a different kind.

The director of the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man trilogy wrote and directed the action-comedy Wolfs (in select theaters Sep. 20; on Apple TV+ Sep. 27), about two fixers — played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt — who are brought in to help clean up a big crime involving Margaret (Amy Ryan), a New York D.A., late one night. The problem is, they don't work with each other, nor did they expect the other to be there, but circumstances now dictate that these two lone wolves work together, like it or not, to get the job done.

The story plays out over the course of one night — one very cold winter night in NYC. "That was so stupid of me," Watts tells Entertainment Weekly, laughing about the predicament he created. "I wrote the movie, I could have written it anywhere. I could have written it at any time of year. I chose New York at night."

But he had good motivation. "I live here, I love New York, and I've been shooting Spider-Man movies that are supposed to be in New York in Atlanta for the last seven years," he explains. "I was ready to finally go to actual Chinatown, and to hit all my favorite spots in New York. I love it here, and I wanted to put that on screen, especially in the winter. New York in the snow is something that you very rarely get to see. When it really snows, it's a very unique thing."

Clooney and Pitt were looking for potential projects that could serve as their first onscreen effort some 16 years after briefly appearing together in the Coen Bros.' 2008 film Burn After Reading and before that their Oceans trilogy. They liked Watts' idea, and the trio then took it to studios. With Apple on board, Watts went to work on the script, tailoring it to the actors' sensibilities and friendship.

"It's one of those ideas that doesn't really work unless it's the two of them. That's where it came from," Watts says. "But the big difference is that you don't often get the opportunity to pitch something like that to those two guys."

While these competing fixers have enough to worry about in each other, their mission is made complicated by a squirmy "kid," as they call him. At first, he's the problem Margaret needs fixed, but then the kid becomes their problem when they realize he's carrying a ridiculous amount of drugs for his friend. So they work quickly to try to track down the supplier and return $250,000 worth of heroin. At least that's the goal.

Below, the director previews the action and the comedy, explains why this movie is everything audiences love about his two stars while turning their familiar dynamic on its head, shares his lone-wolf movie inspirations, reveals what the actors thought about jokes poking fun at their age, and more.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why fixers? What were you interested in exploring with two guys who have made this life and career for themselves?

JON WATTS: I like the idea of a character that's an expert, and to put someone who thinks they're completely unique — that there's no one else like them in the world — face to face with someone who's exactly like them. That was the key idea that started the whole thought process for me, and then to be able to use that to explore this very elevated movie version of the criminal underworld, all those things made sense. But it started with, what's the best lone wolf job? What could be the coolest, most unique guy ever? That's where fixer came from.

These two fixers are working in opposition to each other but toward the same goal, really. Given George and Brad's history, how conscious were all of you about making sure that you weren't doing something that felt like it was the Oceans guys back together for more of the same?

Well, they're friends in the Oceans movies, this was immediately the opposite of that. They hate each other, so that immediately makes it feel different but also gave them something really fun to play. Because they're such good friends in real life, it creates this sort of need in the audience where you just want them to be friends. You're like, can't you see they're perfect for each other? [Laughs] It makes people frustrated in a good way. It's the opposite of an odd-couple pairing because they're the same guy; it's not two different characters. And it takes half the movie to realize that.

They have a great ease and this classic style of banter with each other. How did you strike that balance of the right amount of hatred for each other while also allowing that stuff we love about George and Brad to come through?

That's what was fun to explore. People talk about the two of them as though they have this really long, rich cinematic history together, but they've only really been in three movies together. I think we've seen them together on press tours and we know that they're friends in real life, so it feels like they have a much deeper catalog than they really do. So I felt like it was a completely untapped resource to just go different places with them and see what that was like.

You directed the three recent Spider-Man films, so you've swapped working with actors in their late teens/early 20s to guys now in their early 60s. I very much appreciate that these characters acknowledge their age, that they grab their backs a couple times, stuff like that.

On my Jeff Bridges show The Old Man, I won an AARP Award, and I've also won a Kid's Choice award for [Spider-Man: No Way Home]. So I have the two ends of the awards. I don't have anything in between, but I do have the beginning and the end. [Laughs]

With George and Brad, were you like, "Hey, guys, are we cool joking about your age?" Or were they the ones who perhaps brought it up to comment on?

That was one where you put it in the script and you cross your fingers and you hope that they don't get mad. But no, they liked it. It was just the right amount and it was things that I think they were totally fine having some fun with.

How did setting this over the course of one night give you really specific direction for the action? And then, on the other hand, in what ways did that challenge you?

I love one-night movies. That's a great little subgenre. After Hours was a huge inspiration for this movie, and I like just how linear it makes the storytelling. You're not really jumping ahead in time. We rarely change perspectives. We're with the guys the whole time. You have to get really strict about continuity and things like that. You have to pick clothes that will work under all circumstances because they're wearing the same clothes all night. There's a lot of right-brain puzzles that come up when you set something all in one night, which is fun for me. You don't get the forgiveness of "cut to: the next day."

What other cinematic references did you use for Wolfs?

Alain Delon just died, but he's in the ultimate one — Le Samouraï is the first to me of those kinds of movies, but there's so many. The Killer, obviously Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, Jean Reno in La Femme Nikita and then in The Professional. I feel like that's maybe where the wolf in Pulp Fiction came from, is Jean Reno in La Femme Nikita.... And it's really funny too, because Brad and George have been in a bunch of those movies: Brad is that character in Killing Them Softly; George is both Michael Clayton and his character in The American. I love those movies. Those are some of my favorite kinds of movies. So it was really easy for me to pull from those — and just an excuse to rewatch them, too.

Did you meet with a lot of young actors for Austin Abrams' part? Or did you know him or already have him in mind?

I've known him for a while. He was in my friend Jake Schreier's movie, Paper Towns. So I've been aware of him since then and always liked him and knew he was great and felt like he's never really gotten the chance to show off how great he is and what he can do. So he was always who I was imagining in the role, but I did want to do my due diligence and see a bunch of people. There was an exciting idea about casting a true unknown, someone who this would be their first movie and it would be opposite Brad Pitt, George Clooney. Austin was just the best. He was born to play this role.

I have to ask about the design of that motel where they take him, where each room is a different theme. Was that something you wrote into the script or was that a product of talking to your production designer and figuring out something crazy to do?

No, there's a place that's like that in New York. We couldn't actually shoot there, but I always drive by it on the way to JFK, and there's a themed weird rundown hotel in Queens that it's based on. Everything in there on the set was based on a photo from a real place. So it's kind of like the greatest hits of all these weird, shady motels in New York.

Did you always want Amy Ryan for that role?

I was writing it imagining her, and then it's just a really nice situation to be like, "Well, let's just ask her," and she was available and the timing worked out perfectly. But to be able to ride that line between it being completely intense and emotionally believable that she's in this extremely dramatic situation but still being able to find the humor in there and play it very dry, sort of [in a] deadpan way, that's really difficult. Not a lot of people could do that, and she did it perfectly.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.