How Dust Bunny Gave Bryan Fuller A Second Life On The Big Screen

Before the mad scramble for the next great IP franchise, things that get axed in Hollywood tended to stay buried. Bryan Fuller knows that better than most: The mind behind such brilliant and short-lived series as Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Dead Like Me, Fuller is no stranger to starting anew after a promising (if misunderstood) show gets the ax. That cycle of cancellation and rebirth is one of the themes that’s defined his decades in the business, and it’s what makes Dust Bunny — his first feature film, pulled from the ashes of another forgotten TV show — such an inspired pivot.

“It was a story at Amazing Stories that Steven Spielberg loved,” Fuller tells Inverse, citing the short-lived Apple TV anthology. “That was fun, to have his magical moon dust on the story. But it never got traction with the studio or the network in a way that I was like, ‘Okay, instead of blowing this up for the seventh time, how about I just take this back and make it a movie?’”

Fuller’s a titan of the small screen and an avid student of cinema, but until Dust Bunny, he’d never directed anything for film. While known and loved for high-concept ideas, the premise here was just “digestible” enough to serve as his debut feature: “It didn’t feel like it was too much of a bite to choke down, that I felt like I could get my arms around it in a way that I wasn’t setting myself up for failure.”

Dust Bunny follows the adventures of a young girl who hires a hitman to slay the monster under her bed after her parents are devoured by the creature. It’s a delightfully simple and even self-contained story, but Fuller knows exactly how to make Dust Bunny feel big. Filmed in Budapest on strict budget constraints, it boasts the ornate set design and the intricate action sequences you’d find in a much more expensive film. That’s all Fuller testing the parameters of a different medium. “I could peacock with the camera in a way that would allow me to enjoy being a first-time director,” Fuller continues. Split diopter shots and an ultra-wide aspect ratio — the widest since Napoleon in 1917 — are just a few ways Fuller was able to flex behind the camera.

Fuller also gets to flex his love for the French cinema of the ‘60s, citing The City of Lost Children and Amelie as major influences. He’s always been drawn to the quirky characters in those films; compelled to lean in rather than look away. You can feel that same sense of curiosity in Dust Bunny. Delicate style gives way to compelling substance as this twisted fairytale progresses: Even after decades honing his aesthetic elsewhere, it feels like the filmmaker has been reborn on the big screen.

An overdue reunion

Dust Bunny is at once a tribute to and a subversion of the work that Fuller is best known for. Allusions to the whimsy of Pushing Daisies, the quiet conspiracies of Hannibal, or the conversation between faith and doubt in American Gods all coexist in one story. That all those shows met an untimely end in one form or another makes Dust Bunny all the more satisfying. It feels like the collective consolation prize for years of canceled Fuller-produced shows, as it allowed the director to reunite with old collaborators, from John Washak — who briefly worked on a Pushing Daisies sequel comic before designing the film’s titular bunny — to Hannibal himself, Mads Mikkelsen.

“It felt like there was no time lost,” Fuller says of their reunion. “It was a much more intimate experience than we had on Hannibal. I feel like there was a brotherhood in that. I had never felt so taken care of by an actor before.”

Despite their decade-long friendship, Dust Bunny is only the second project Fuller and Mikkelsen have collaborated on, and a prime opportunity for each of them. The pair worked together for three seasons of Hannibal, but Fuller was showrunning, not directing: “I didn’t get to have as intimate an experience with the cast as you do on a movie.” Dust Bunny gave them the chance to explore a new aspect of their creative partnership. He also got to offer the actor a role “where the audience could see just a little bit more of the Mads that I know as a human being.”

“I don’t see them as goodies or baddies,” Mikkelsen tells Inverse of his most recognizable characters. “I mean, if it’s well written, you get both sides of the coin. And that’s what Bryan deals in.”

“Most of these villains are so far away from who he is,” Fuller adds. He was keen to show the world “a human being who is witty and naughty and charming and boyish in a way that Hannibal is completely not” — and perhaps reveal more about how Mikkelsen approaches his work.

Mikkelsen’s unnamed hitman definitely feels like a unique addition to the actor’s filmography, if only because he’s so hard to pin down. Fuller and costume designer Olivier Bériot left no stone unturned in creating his eclectic look: “At one point he’s sort of Don Knotts from Three’s Company. At another point he’s Paul Newman in casual attire.” The director also wanted to invoke Bruce Lee and his iconic yellow tracksuit, but with his own personal spin. Bériot dressed Mikkelsen in a suit from one of Fuller’s favorite designers, Grace Wales Bonner, to complete the look.

“I remember Mads coming in, and he was trying on the different outfits, and he’s like, ‘I don’t know who this guy is… It seems like a different character would wear all of these outfits,’” Fuller recalls. And on some level, that’s the point: We don’t know his character’s name, much less his true intentions. He’s gruff, he’s malleable — but to Aurora, the little girl who asks him to slay the monster under her bed, he’s also trustworthy.

Fuller has become synonymous with offbeat fairytale remixes on the small screen, and Dust Bunny came to be in much the same way. He first pitched the film to Mikkelsen at the premiere of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Sophie Sloan — the Scottish actress who plays Aurora — developed her American accent by watching TikToks. He also got a “sweetheart deal” from Legacy Effects, the production house behind shows like Skeleton Crew and Alien: Earth, to design the titular bunny.

“The wonderful people at Legacy, who build monsters for so many movies, were friends,” Fuller explains. “And I was like, ‘We can’t really afford you, but we have this monster.’ And they’re like, ‘We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about how much it costs.’”

The massive puppet (which Fuller describes as “part Highland Cow, part hippopotamus, part piranha, and all bunny”) was crucial to help immerse the cast in a true fight-or-flight scenario — at least, for some of the cast. “One of my favorite days when we were filming is when the monster arrived, and we got to show Sophie, and she was not terrified at all,” Fuller recalls. “She just kept on saying how cute he was — and given the nature of her relationship to the monster and the narrative, that seemed both sweet and appropriate.”

The best of both worlds

Fuller’s first film is stellar, and if he has his way, it won’t be his last — but don’t expect him to abandon TV altogether. He’s got a pitch for another season of Pushing Daisies ready to go, and still owes a lot to his time developing shows otherwise. “As a showrunner, I was very hands-on with the department heads, and the aesthetics were very bespoke,” Fuller says. “Showrunning prepared me to direct in a way that I feel allowed me to communicate ideas, [but] directing is a much more intimate experience than showrunning because you’re always in a production meeting or in editorial or rewriting.”

Still, there are some things, like the impending reception to Dust Bunny, that TV couldn’t prepare him for. He feels a kind of “dysmorphia” as he waits for the film’s official premiere: Compared to the inevitability of television, where “​​you know people are going to watch it because it’s free in their living rooms,” creating a film and hoping that audiences opt in is a much more daunting experience.

Still, Dust Bunny has opened the doors to a new kind of storytelling for Fuller, and he’s taken to it like a fish to water. The film is certainly the kind you see on a big screen, splicing the perverse thrills of an Amblin story with the decadent visuals of an older French masterpiece. “I think some people will see it as sort of a popcorn thriller,” Fuller says. “But the secondary intention is for people to have a platform to talk about their own monsters — their own rage bunnies, as it were.”

Dust Bunny opens in theaters on December 12.