‘Opus’ Director Mark Anthony Green on His Sundance Debut, the Horror Genre & Spotting Ayo Edebiri Before She Was Famous

Name: Mark Anthony Green

Sundance project: “Opus,” an A24 thriller he wrote and directed. The movie, his first feature, stars Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Amber Midthunder, Young Mazino, Stephanie Suganami and Tony Hale. After premiering at Sundance, the film opens in theaters March 14.

Notable past credits: Green spent 13 years at GQ; he started writing for the publication at age 19, his first job once he graduated from Morehouse College. “In a macro sense, I think a lot of my taste and my voice, I found that at GQ,” he says. Prior to “Opus,” he wrote and directed a short called “Trapeze, U.S.A.” in 2017.

Green started writing “Opus” nearly five years ago, while still at GQ. (He officially left the magazine in 2023 and has since relocated to L.A.)

“I read so many filmmakers who are like, ‘I had a dream and then this thing happened’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s an idea for a movie,’” Green says. “My approach to filmmaking is like there’s a basket with things that I want to say about the world, and then there’s a basket of worlds that I think visually and culturally would be really interesting to explore. And then if one thing from one basket and one thing from the other basket line up in a way that feels subversive and feels surprising and entertaining first and foremost, then maybe I have a film there.”

“Opus” follows a young writer, played by Edebiri, who travels to a remote island at the invitation of a reclusive pop icon, played by Malkovich, to hear his long-awaited comeback album. The film is being called both a horror and a thriller — either is fine by Green, just so long as you don’t call it elevated horror (“I think that term is bulls–t”). The movie explores our fascination with celebrity culture, and Green hopes it leaves audiences with questions. 

“I think the cool thing about being an artist is that you don’t have to have the answers. You just have to make something provocative enough for people to ask the questions,” Green says. “I would love for people to watch ‘Opus’ and interrogate this kind of epidemic of tribalism that exists in both entertainment and outside of entertainment. It is not just an American epidemic. And I think that ‘Opus’ at its most successful version, people have a conversation about that. And if that happens, I’d be ecstatic. I’m ecstatic now.”

He got the call that his film would be at Sundance right before Thanksgiving and “the honest answer is I freaked out,” he says. 

“Sundance has always prioritized Black filmmakers, woman filmmakers, queer filmmakers, freaks like myself that want to say daring things in odd ways. And so for me, there was no better place to show this film,” he adds. “There was no bigger honor to show this film for the first time.”

Green learned about filmmaking through YouTube, books, podcasts, documentaries — and a common message was to write characters with a short list of actors in mind. Malkovich was at the top of his list for the character Moretti, and the at-the-time unknown Edebiri for Ariel. Green is friends with Edebiri’s “The Bear” costar Lionel Boyce, who plays Marcus on the show, and because of that plus his job at GQ, he was sent an early screener of season one.

“I did a thing I’m not supposed to do: I watched, I was like, ‘holy s–t, that’s it,’” he says of Edebiri. “So I mailed it to our exec at A24, which I was not supposed to do, and I was like ‘This is her.’”