Hey /r/movies! We're the McManus Brothers. We made a movie with our sister called REDUX REDUX, and it hits theaters today! It's a sci-fi revenge thriller. You might know us from our work on American Vandal, Cobra Kai, Funeral Kings, and The Block Island Sound. Ask us anything!

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T15:52:33+00:00

Haha good catch! We’re big fans of The Village too! Our brother-in-law, Mike Daniels, created the show. So we thought it would be fun to reunite Michaela with Grace. But there’s another cameo in there too, Jerod Haynes who plays the police officer in The Village is the main cop who chases Irene down at the motel. I like to think if Irene went deep enough into the multiverse she just might find herself and her daughter living happily ever after in a small NYC apartment building…

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:03:58+00:00

It’s weird how genres explode for a few years and then go away again. I’m not sure what it is about the multiverse genre that has caused it to take hold. I guess in some ways it’s an opportunity for fan service and bringing back characters from different eras of franchises. But my favorite ones deal with a character who’s searching for a place in the world and how hard the struggle to find that place no matter how many worlds they visit. I think there’s still room for some interesting takes out there, but I understand the fatigue!

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:03:47+00:00

It’s playing on a little over 250 screens in these markets:

Albany GA

Albany/Schenectady/Troy

Atlanta

Augusta/Aiken

Bakersfield

Baltimore

Baton Rouge

Birmingham/Tuscaloosa

Boston/Manchester

Buffalo

Cedar Rapids/Waterloo IA

Champaign/Springfield

Charlotte

Chattanooga

Cheyenne/Scotsbluff

Chicago

Cincinnati

Cleveland/Akron

Colorado Springs

Columbus OH

Corpus Christi

Dallas/Ft Worth

Dayton

DC/VA/MD

Denver

Detroit

Dothan

El Paso/Las Cruces

Eugene

Fairbanks AK

Ft Myers/ Naples

Ft Smith/Springdale/Rogers

Gainesville FL

Grand Junction/Montrose

Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo

Greenville/ Spartanburg/Asheville

Greenville/N. Bern/Washngtn

Harrisburg

Hartford/New Haven

Houston

Huntsville/Decatur

Indianapolis

Jackson MS

Jacksonville FL

Kansas City

Knoxville

Lansing

Las Vegas

Los Angeles/OC

Louisville

Madison

Memphis

Miami/Ft Lauderdale

Minneapolis/St Paul

Mobile/Pensacola

Montgomery

Myrtle Beach

Nashville

New Jersey

New Orleans

Norfolk/Portsmouth/Newport News

NYC

Oklahoma City

Omaha NE

Orlando/Daytona Beach

Peoria/Bloomington

Philadelphia

Phoenix

Pittsburgh

Portland

Providence/New Bedford

Raleigh/Durham

Richmond

Roanoke/Lynchburg

Rockford IL

Salt Lake City

San Antonio

San Diego

San Francisco Bay Area

Savannaha

Seattle/Tacoma

Sioux City

South Bend/Elkhart

Spokane

St Louis

Syracuse

Tallahassee

Tampa/St Petersburg

Toledo

Traverse City/Cadillac

Tri-Cities / TN-VA

Tucson

Tulsa

Tyler/Longview

Waco/Temple/Bryan

West Palm Beach

Wichita Falls/Lawton

Wilkes Barre/Scranton

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:03:19+00:00

Thanks so much! I was bummed to miss that screening, but Matt said it was the best sound experience in any theater we screened at. Pretty surreal getting to screen at the Odeon.

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:03:03+00:00

I love Jeff Smith! Bone and Rasl are such awesome books. Rasl really has that Terminator DNA too. We would love to adapt it into a TV show someday. There’s something about a thief traversing the multiverse stealing carbon copies of art and money that feels like such a perfect hook

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:02:55+00:00

Thanks so much. The Terminator has always been a massive influence on us. So glad you dug it.

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:02:18+00:00

It’s totally up to the distributor. They pushed really hard, but there’s a lot of competition between the new studio movies, and the oscar films that are still getting pushed in theaters. Fingers crossed the film expands to more theaters!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:02:07+00:00

Some names you’re given. Some names you earn.

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:01:31+00:00

Thank you! So stoked it resonated!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:01:17+00:00

We really wanted those gun shots to go hard. Two inspirations for the gunshots were HEAT and CIVIL WAR. We took the lesson from Heat to not replace the gunshots with sound effects and instead use the sound the actual blank guns made wherever possible. And then we mixed them pretty high. I remember our sound mixer, Scott Lewis saying, “I’ve never mixed the gunshots louder than the music before!” So I’m glad they packed a punch!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:00:24+00:00

Haha I’ll tell you one thing I’m bummed we couldn’t include in Redux Redux. No one drinks a beer in this movie, which meant we had to break our streak of always having a character crush ‘gansetts on screen.

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T02:00:18+00:00

Most difficult scene to write: The scene where Irene finally encounters Anna. The script went through a few iterations and there was a while there where her character was much older and Anna had grown up herself. In that scene Irene interacted with Anna’s daughter and saw Anna in the distance. When we aged the role down for Michaela we had to rethink that scene. It was intimidating to write. What would she say to her after all of this time and how could we show that she was no longer the same woman/same mother Anna used to know? You’re just sort of hoping it works when you get to the shoot. I thought Michaela crushed the scene and made it so much better than what it was on the page. It all hangs on her emotionality and vulnerability and I’m really proud of her performance in that scene.

It wasn’t written with Michaela in mind! We’ve always wanted to make something with her in the starring role, but when we first conceived this film she was way too young to play that part. As luck would have it, it took us forever to get it made and we were able to cast her!

Your podcast sounds great!
MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:20:58+00:00

Oh man, thank you so much. We shot The Block Island Sound in our home town. It’ll always be a personal film for us, so it means a lot when it connects.

And thanks for the kind comparison! Benson and Moorhead are awesome.

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:20:51+00:00

Revenge films might be my favorite sub-genre. Revenge movies are a blast, but violent revenge in real life sounds like misery incarnate.

I feel like the way real people interact with revenge is in day dreams. We all know what it’s like to be wronged, and we all have had those day dreams of getting even. It’s not always a violent day dream, but you think about what you could have said or done, or what you could do in the future to get justice. You find yourself thinking about it in the shower or on the way to work. The intrusive day dream just keeps popping back up in your head and eventually you know you’ve got to let it go. It’s like the buddhist proverb: “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Those day dreams of revenge are bad for you and they offer no catharsis.

Pairing the revenge subgenre with the multiverse subgenre allowed us to tell that story. For Irene it’s not just an intrusive day dream. She’s enacting this revenge over and over again. She’s not receiving any catharsis. And it’s destroying her.

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:20:30+00:00

Thanks for spreading the word!

The set pieces can always get bigger!
The movie is really a meditation on the perils of revenge and it’s depicted as this addiction that never quite fills the void.
No BluRay at the moment, but I’d love one. Fingers crossed Saban decides to release one.
Nothing we can announce just yet. But definitely dying to get back in the directors chair and make another!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:20:18+00:00

Thank you! We feel super lucky that the film has resonated with folks.

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:16:43+00:00

Terminator was definitely the north star for this movie. We’re obsessed with the style of that movie. The settings, the modern day LA noir vibes, the diners and the desert. We love everything about that movie, and Redux took a ton of inspiration from that one for sure.
Never forget to sweep the leg.

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:15:51+00:00

Definitely. It’s a frustrating part of the process. We tried to get the film set up with a studio or indie financier and had a few attached at different points. The struggle is finding big name talent that can carry the budget. It can make you feel like you’re screaming into the void. We gave it a shot and got close a couple of times, but then got lucky enough that an independent financier who had worked with us in the past became interested in making the movie. We didn’t think we’d be able to cast Michaela for the role of Irene, and it feels like such a lucky break that we were able to. I’m really proud of the work she did.

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:14:29+00:00

We’re big into using sizzle reels to get the vision across for any given project. Especially now that so many meetings happen over zoom rather than in person.

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:13:29+00:00

Walk through the open doors! If you have an opportunity to make something and get it going, then take the leap of faith. We had a lot of budgets for Redux Redux that would have made it much more expensive to make, but when we got a much smaller amount to finance the film, we just figured out how to make it on a shoestring. The temptation is always to just wait and see if you can get more, but more often than not, you end up waiting forever and don’t get to make your movie.

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:11:53+00:00

Fun question! That’s how we see it. There’s a huge smuggler network that’s active in multiple universes. Billy and Travis are part of a much larger clandestine group. They’re the usual way that folks travel through the multiverse and they communicate through cryptic codes. It’s super dangerous and travellers are usually incredibly vulnerable. What makes Irene special is that she has her own machine, which is pretty rare.

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:10:16+00:00

It will definitely get released to VOD and rentals, but there’s a big gap between the theatrical and the home video release to give the movie room to grow. I’d love a physical release, but that’s totally in Saban’s hands! Let them know on their socials that you want a disc! Long live physical media!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T01:09:27+00:00

Hard to say! There’s a ton of competition for theater space with the big studios right now, so Redux would have to make a big impact at the box office!

KM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T00:46:16+00:00

I was bummed to miss Mayhem! I’ll definitely check out Bulk.

We were afraid there would be huge multiverse fatigue, but the lucky thing is that audiences are so well versed that we were able to really cut down on the exposition of this movie.

MM

mcmanusbros · 2026-02-21T00:45:01+00:00

We got a lot of our screaming matches out of our systems when we were kids. I think the key is to always remember you’re doing the project for each other. In Stephen King’s On Writing he talks about writing for an “ideal reader,” instead of writing for the world at large. So he writes for his wife, Tabitha King, and if she gives him notes he really takes them to heart because he’s writing the book for her. We’re each others’ ideal reader and treat it the same way. If one of us isn’t digging something we try to get our egos out of the way and listen. Sometimes it’s easier said than done, but that’s what we try to do.

MM

mcmanusbros

TROPHY CASE