Forget Haunted Houses, Paramount's New Horror Movie Traps You in a Nightmare on Wheels

3 hours ago 5

Published May 22, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Summary

Perri Nemiroff chats with the team behind Passenger.
Producers Walter Hamada and Gary Dauberman, and writer Zachary Donohue take us behind the scenes for the making of Passenger.
The trio discuss shooting practically, their cursed production, creating the lore of the Passenger, and more.

From the director behind Troll Hunter, André Øvredal, and the mind behind 2013’s The Den, co-writer Zachary Donohue, the trailer alone for Passenger has been scarring moviegoers well before its official release. Driving along an eerie, secluded road, we’re introduced to the eponymous entity that haunts its vehicular victims, played spectacularly in the movie by Joseph Lopez (Run Rabbit Run), and his presence alone is enough to leave viewers shaken well after the credits roll. Following a special screening event, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff had the chance to speak with Donohue and the producers during an exclusive Q&A, where the team shared behind-the-scenes details and stories from set.

Passenger is inspired by Donohue’s childhood, the screenwriter tells Nemiroff, sparked by the long stretches of backroads in upstate New York, where he grew up. Over the years, the idea of a “road horror movie” kept returning to Donohue, but it wasn’t until he realized that every town across the world has some version of a haunted road, with its own unsettling lore — so what if all those ghost stories were connected by one malicious entity? Thus, the Passenger (Lopez) was created, a demonic being that preys on passersby. “If there's a Saint Christopher, if there's a patron saint of travelers, why?” Producer Walter Hamada (The Conjuring, The Batman) asks. “There's got to be something out there that's the opposite side of that coin.”

Starring Lopez, Lou Llobell (Foundation), Jacob Scipio (The Expendables 4), and Oscar-winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Passenger asks audiences to buckle up for Øvredal’s deadly ride across the state of Washington, sans Volume stages, into the actual darkness of night. Check out the full conversation in the video above or the transcript below, where producers Gary Dauberman (It, Annabelle Comes Home) and Hamada, and co-writer Donohue discuss the challenging (sometimes “miserable”) production of Passenger, from capturing the beautiful state of Washington to enlisting the help of not only a priest but an exorcist on set. They reveal the dangerous, inexplicable incidents that occurred throughout filming, why that unforgettable scene from the teaser trailer was almost cut completely, and tons more. Plus, be sure to check out Nemiroff’s interviews with Øvredal and the stars, Llobell and Scipio!

What If Every Haunted Road Led to the Same Demon?

PERRI NEMIROFF: Zach, you're going to get one of my absolute favorite writing questions to ask. Can you tell everybody in the audience what idea number one was, the thing that started this all, but then also if you had a break-story moment, something you came up with along the way that made you know, “Passenger is whole and ready to go now?”

ZACHARY DONOHUE: That's a great question. I have a few answers to it, because it took a lot of steps along the way. I'm from upstate New York, and there's a lot of back roads up there, and I just grew up driving on very creepy, liminal [roads], just driving at night, just feeling the fear that you have. Even my driveway was scary. My parents are in the audience, and my driveway was about a half mile long, and it was in the woods. We lived in the woods. So, just having that and then just having a lot of weird experiences with the road.

One time when I was young, this was pre-iPhones, my mom and I were riding in her car, and the car broke down, and the sun was going down, and I was like, “Are we going to die?” And we hitchhiked.

GARY DAUBERMAN: You hitchhiked?!

DONOHUE: We hitchhiked. Yeah, it was terrifying.

DAUBERMAN: Who picked you up?

DONOHUE: This elderly couple.

DAUBERMAN: This sounds like the start of another movie.

DONOHUE: Yeah! So, I just had back roads kind of, like, ingrained in my DNA, and then it wasn't until I was 20 that I was in a bad car accident. I got through it without a scratch, but it was something that kind of lingered with me, and then through that, I was like, “Okay, I really want to tell a road horror movie,” because not only are roads scary places, but they're also dangerous and deadly places. So, had the kernel for this idea, and then… I realized that I wanted to make a supernatural movie because I love horror.

The idea became, essentially, that you could drive, and wherever you're from, you probably have a haunted road in your hometown, and you probably have folklore about the person that haunts that road. I wanted to tell the story that kind of connected all of that, so it's not just random regional horror, it's this one demonic entity. You could be driving in California one night, or you could be driving in New Jersey, and you would encounter potentially the same demon. So, that was the kernel for all of this.

In our press notes you heavily emphasize the fact that your demon, the Passenger, is not a creature; he doesn't just come out and kill you. Can you explain to us a little bit about why that kind of villain, a creature who comes out and kills you, was not the right choice for this movie, and instead, a demon figure that plays with his food before he eats it was the way to go?

DONOHUE: I guess it's just like a preference thing. I just personally lean more towards demons and supernatural are scarier. I think that if you're driving down a road and you see a weird creature, I think you might think, like, “Oh, that's really creepy,” but if you spot this figure that has almost a human shape, and you see it in your headlights at night, I think that's a pretty weird thing, just for something to be out there. But then, as you're getting closer, you realize there's something really unknowable about their expression and just kind of sinister. So, that's why.

'Passenger's Crew Reveal All the Unexplained Paranormal Incidents From Set

"We brought an exorcist in."

Gary and Walter, I wanted to throw a big, broad horror question your way to lean into what was going through your minds when the script first crossed your paths. What is it about what general audiences are into, horror-wise, and the particular themes and ideas that are really speaking to people nowadays, that made you think, “The idea for Passenger is something that could really pop with audiences nationwide?”

DAUBERMAN: You can take the hard part. I'm going to take the easy part. It was a pitch initially from Zach and Tom [Burgess]. They had a great pitch deck, which he sent to me and Max [Lippe], who works with me, and we'd done a lot of haunted house stuff for the universe, and it's always trying to figure out, “Okay, how can we make this fresh and new?”and the whole idea of doing a haunted house on wheels really appealed to me, and the challenges. You can't do a creaky rocking chair in the back of a van, so it was like, “Okay, what kind of new challenges can we do?”

So, I found really exciting. Then, I’d sent that to Walt and said, “I think this could be really something cool and different,” and you responded to it. Then, off that, we developed the script. Now you can answer the question about the themes. [Laughs]

WALTER HAMADA: What we loved about the idea was that, I know for me, my favorite horror movies are the ones that you feel like you leave the theater and you think, “This could happen to me.” So, heightened movies, when it's the SWAT team that goes into the haunted mental asylum, I don't go, “Oh my god, the next time I go into a haunted mental asylum, I might be scared!” Like The Strangers, I always loved that. It's just a knock on the door, right? There's something universal about that.

DAUBERMAN: Yeah, “You were home.”

HAMADA: You go home, and there's a creepy sound. So, the idea of, like, you’re driving home… We did plenty of these screenings where we watched the cut of the film, and I'm driving home late at night, and you think, “Oh, shit, I shouldn't stop.” Like, “If something happened, would I pull over?” There's something relatable to that idea and tapping into dashcam footage.

I remember one of our visual effects people, after they read the script, was driving to Vegas, and they pulled over. They had a Tesla, so they pulled over to charge their car, and they're waiting there, and there's nobody around, the sun was going down, and the Tesla has a screen, like if there's someone behind you, it shows a person, like an image of a person. There's no one in the parking lot, but her screen showed a person behind her, and it freaked her out because she’d just read the script, and I’m like, “Yes! That's what this movie is.”

It's a movie that will make you think twice when you're on the road and make you think about what are those things that are out there that you don't understand? And just the whole idea that if there's a Saint Christopher, if there's a patron saint of travelers, why? Because there's got to be something out there that's the opposite side of that coin.

Your answer is making me want to ask the three of you this. It's become one of my new favorite questions to ask. Can each of you tell me something you stopped doing in your day-to-day because of something you saw in a horror movie?

DAUBERMAN: I'm scared of everything, so I don't know if, like, initially a horror movie… Because I was already not doing a whole lot.

HAMADA: [Laughs] He doesn't leave the house much. Look, I'm a genuine believer in the supernatural. I've walked into places and felt uncomfortable and found out after the fact that something had happened. I remember my wife and I were looking for our first house, and we went to this one open house, and we walked through the house, and my wife is like, “This house is incredible.” I walked into this one room, and I remember I felt really uncomfortable. I walked out, and she toured the rest of the house, and I was thinking, “Eh, there’s something weird.” At the end of the tour, the realtor was like, “I just have to disclose something.” They said, “Someone committed suicide in the house. It wasn't the owner. It was a guest of the house.” I'm like, “Was it that one room?” He goes, “Yeah, it was.” And my wife's like, “We can get a good deal on this house.” I'm like, “There's no way!” I didn't even know this story, and I felt it. So, I'm a believer.

So, every movie affects me. Like The Conjuring movies. I do believe. So, with the Passenger movie, there is no lore pre-Zach about the Passenger, but I can't tell you how many weird things happened over the course of this movie that we can't explain. I've had four different nails in my tires and had to replace all four of my tires. The first AD on the first day of shooting, four tires went flat. There was another. Our director, on additional photography, the first day of additional photography, walked out of prep — two tires were flat. Had to replace two tires. Joseph [Lopez], our actor who played the Passenger…

DONOHUE: Who's here tonight…

HAMADA: Really? Joseph? Oh, stand up! Come on. This man right here premiered two trailers on one day. He's also the star of Insidious, the new Insidious movie coming out.

DAUBERMAN: Also designed the sweater for Spicoli.

HAMADA: Yes, he did.

DAUBERMAN: In Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

HAMADA: He sent us these great blankets that he makes. My daughter put it in her car, and a week later, her engine blew up. We had to replace the engine in her car. When I took her to the shop to replace the engine, she was clearing out her car because she had to leave it for a week, and she had the blanket, and I said, “No. That's not going in my car.” So, I don't know. I'm a believer.

DONOHUE: And also the van that Melissa Leo has in the movie randomly became infested with flies during the shoot.

HAMADA: Yeah. And then they brought in someone to exterminate and get rid of it, and they came back. I don’t know. Flies?

I also heard Jacob requested to have the set blessed at one point.

HAMADA: We did it twice. Before we started shooting, we had a priest come in and do it.

DAUBERMAN: Which we always do.

HAMADA: Yeah, which we do on every supernatural movie. We do it just to be safe. And then, on our additional photography, we brought an exorcist in because we kept having problems over the course of this production. So, we had an exorcist come in and do another blessing. So, I don't know, hopefully you guys will all be safe.

I will say, we had another screening last night, and we found out one of my executives’ guest got a nail in their tire and had to get their tire fixed this morning.

DAUBERMAN: Post it online if you… Let’s go viral.

#PassengerMovie!

'Passenger' Was Filmed Practically Inside Real Vans Across Washington

"It makes the scares feel more substantial, more real. They have more teeth to them."

I have so many follow-up questions. Zach, I'll throw this one your way because I want to give Joseph a bigger shout-out. I have to imagine for you, having written this, one of the most exciting things is seeing your big bad come to life on set right before your eyes, so can you tell us something that he did with this role that took the Passenger to a level that you never even realized the character could meet?

DONOHUE: Joseph just brought a personality to it, a physicality to it, and just an eeriness. I remember also being on set, and the fact that he stayed in character so much. I had my headphones in in between takes, and Joseph would just be in the back of the van while the crew was resetting up, and he'd just be breathing creepily for five minutes. I was like, “Does Joseph know that they've called cut?” And he's just, [breathes scarily], “Come to me, Maddie.”

HAMADA: [Laughs] Joseph, do your scream.

JOSEPH LOPEZ: [Screams from the audience]

HAMADA: That's my favorite.

DAUBERMAN: So, so good.

HAMADA: In our camera tests, Jacob [Scipio] and Lou [Llobell] were standing by the van, and it was the first time Joseph was in full costume and makeup, and he walked up behind them and did that scream. They jumped out of their skin. [Laughs] I think Jacob pushed Lou aside! They ran away. It was the funniest thing.

[Laughs] That just made my day. Thank you for that.

I wanted to ask the two of you this specific question about figuring out how to film this movie, because one thing that was crossing my mind while I was watching it is how many movies that are heavily set in driving vehicles will utilize, maybe something like The Volume. This was filmed with three different vans on location. Can you tell us a little bit about figuring out that this movie needed to be shot that way?

DAUBERMAN: We shot this up in Washington, the entire state. All credit to André [Øvredal] and the crew who really figured it out and wanted to make it as practical as possible because I think it makes the scares feel more substantial, more real. They have more teeth to them, I think, because of that. André didn't want to buy a van and split it up and be able to shoot, and do all this. He really wanted to figure out how to shoot inside the van. So, he and his DP, [Federico Verardi], got together and figured out what’s the smallest camera package they could get in order to be able to position themselves behind the driver or come off the driver and spin around and be able to shoot out back. They really dug in deep and figured out how to do it.

It needs to feel like a cross-country road trip, and I think Washington… I'm terrible with geography, and I had no idea it has deserts and all kinds of different landscapes. It's incredible, and we utilized them all.

HAMADA: We never thought one state could do New York, North Carolina, all the way out to the desert, and that was all Washington. Every location was shot in Washington, which is pretty incredible.

I will say the one thing, though, André, from day one, said, “I'm not doing process, I'm not putting a van on a stage, and I'm not going to shake it with grips and do lighting tricks. I'm going to be on location.” And we shot this in the winter. It's freezing cold. It was miserable. Our poor stunt guy, when the actors are driving, and they're doing dialogue, they can't drive, like it's not safe for them to drive, so we had a van built where there was an open cage in the front of the van with a stunt guy who drove the van. He's exposed to the elements in the middle of winter, like rain. I felt so terrible for this guy. He would just drive down the road in this open cage at the bottom, literally right at ground level.

I remember in post, we were watching the footage because it wasn't a big-budget movie, and so you couldn't afford to light the trees and light the background, so André’s watching the footage, and he's like, “Oh, we could have shot this all on stage,” because it just goes to black. Everything went to black. [Laughs] You couldn't see out the windows. I think there is an authenticity to it, but yeah, we could have shot it on a stage. It would have been much easier.

'Passenger's Scariest Scene Came Together at the Last Second

"We can't cut it... We’ve got to shoot this thing."

I wish we had time to highlight every single scare scene in your movie, but to at least get to a couple right now, I'll throw this question to all three of you. Which particular scare set piece did you think was going to be the most challenging for the crew to pull off, and can you tell us a little bit about how André and the team met that challenge and actually made it happen?

DAUBERMAN: They're all challenging. I was thinking the third act set piece out in the middle of the desert, the church being built. I mean, just the logistics of it were very, very tough. But it was all kind of challenging because in a normal supernatural movie, when you're set in a house, you have these long corridors, you have the big rooms, you can kind of build the house to your specifications of, like, “Let's make this room a little bit bigger because I'm gonna put the camera over here.” You're dealing with a van, and you can only get the van so big, so everything became kind of infinitely more challenging, I think, than we initially suspected.

HAMADA: One of the great things is that opening driving scene that's in the teaser trailer of passing by the Passenger, passing him by, passing him by, and then he's in the car. That thing was shot in, like, 15 minutes. We ran out of time. Literally, our day got away from us. We had 15 minutes, we hadn't shot the scare, and we're like, “We're not going to get the scare.” We’re like, “Well, we can't cut it.” I'm just saying, “No, we’ve got to shoot this thing.”

So, we literally had a stunt double who was dressed as the Passenger, and we said, “Just run down the road.” We set up cameras, we drove the car past him, and then we're like, “Run down the road again,” because it couldn't be the same road. So he would run down, and we’d turn the car around and drive by again. We did that, like, four times, and then we're like, “Okay, Joseph, get in the car!” In 15 minutes, we shot that sequence. Obviously, it's a great scare, but that was 15 minutes.

But the oner in the parking lot, which is my favorite scene, that was all André. It wasn't scripted that way. It was scripted as a normal scene, and André’s like, “I want to do it as a oner.” That was an all-day, take-after-take to get it right, because you get camera shadows. It's all the tricks of the challenges of shooting the oner, and boy, that turned out great.

And someone moving the van in a perfectly timed manner, too! That's incredible.

DONOHUE: Yeah, it was a stunt driver who was very good at just putting his pedal to the metal and then just braking very fast.

I had one silly question I wanted to ask you all, because I love this little detail. Do each of you have your own Bob Ross, like a little trinket or thing you keep in your car to bring you good vibes or good luck?

DAUBERMAN: I have fuzzy dice. I’ve had that since my first car I had. Yeah, I've got fuzzy dice that I keep in my glove compartment.

DONOHUE: They're dangling or…?

DAUBERMAN: No, no, no, no, no, I keep them in the glove compartment.

DONOHUE: I think it's music.

DAUBERMAN: Sting's greatest hits?

DONOHUE: Sting's greatest hits. [Laughs]

I wasn't expecting that, but I'll take it. It's a valid answer.

HAMADA: I do have my Bob Ross. The Bob Ross thing was great. I don't remember where that inspiration came from, but I remember we had to write a letter to the Bob Ross estate to allow them to use it because we're like, “There's no chance they're going to let us put Bob Ross in a horror movie.” And so we had to write a letter explaining the whole thematic idea and that it's Maddie’s sense of home and what it represents to her, and they said yes. And we’re like, “Oh my god, we got Bob Ross. This is crazy. We got Bob Ross in the movie!”

DONOHUE: We got Bob Ross, we got Roman Holiday.

I have to start winding down with all of you, but I want to squeeze in two more questions. Walter, one's kind of a follow-up to something you mentioned really briefly before. I love an opportunity to demystify additional photography because I feel like that kind of stuff takes on a negative connotation, which is ridiculous because it is there to make a movie better. So, can you tell me something you all learned about where the film was at after principal photography and how that informed the priorities you had when you went back to shoot more?

HAMADA: Every movie I've worked on…

DAUBERMAN: I think every movie anybody's worked on recently.

HAMADA: …has additional photography. So whether they're good, they're bad… The Conjuring, the first movie, tested through the roof, and we went and shot some extra stuff because why not make it better? The fact that you're shooting something doesn't mean something's broken.

DAUBERMAN: Generally, it's built into the budget now.

HAMADA: It's one of those things of, like, we get a first draft of the script, and Zach wrote a great first draft, but why wouldn't you give notes and make the script better? So, it is one of the things, like Gary says, we built into the budget of the movie. We anticipate that we're going to put the movie together, screen it and test it, show it to an audience, and the audience is going to tell us, “Oh, that scene that you thought was great wasn't that great,” or “That scene or that character, I didn't really understand that character.” and so we need to clarify something for them.

So, every movie that I've ever made has some version of at least three to five days of additional photography, and this one was no different. This one was very much about how do we enhance the scares? How do we take something that's working great and make it even better? So, to us, it's a gift to be able to go back and take something, put it together, and say, “Okay, these are the things that are kind of missing, so let's just see if we can make it a little bit better.”

DAUBERMAN: Yes to everything you said. Yes. It's very much in the same way a comedian workshops jokes. You put the movie up, and you can sit there and feel like, “Okay, this one's working, this one's not.” So you start to really dial down and dial into, “Okay, maybe we can add this here.” It's seasoning on the meat.

Can you give us a specific example? What is something that got even stronger thanks to additional photography?

HAMADA: There are multiple things that happen in additional photography. When you're prepping the movie, the studio wants to make the movie at a certain budget, and they give you a little bit less than you can make it for, so you end up having to cut things from the movie, and inevitably, those are the things that are missing. So you end up having to shoot them later on.

We had stuff in there where we needed our characters to get beaten up a little bit, so you felt like they were struggling, and we never got to see Jacob get hurt. So, the whole van crashing on his leg was additional photography because we weren't able to get that done during principal photography.

DAUBERMAN: The close-up of the scrape with all that stuff is all additional.

HAMADA: But then, also the red light scene, where she's in the backlights like that, we shot a couple extra pieces just to stretch that sequence out a lot and milk that. Hopefully, you guys like that scene. I love that scene.

'The Conjuring's Walter Hamada Wants to Make the Next Great Gateway Horror

"I've done a lot of very over-the-top, R-rated scary movies..."

For my last question, for all three of you, I am obsessed with the genre, I am a very big fan of your work in it, and I would like to manifest some more. So, for each of you, can you name one thing that still remains on your horror filmmaking bucket list that you would be most eager to tick next?

DAUBERMAN: Oh my god.

DONOHUE: You mean like a remake? Is that what you're saying?

There are no rules to this game. You can say whatever you want. Actually, there is a rule. It has to fall in the horror genre.

DAUBERMAN: I've been working on directing and writing an original. It's sort of outside IP, so I'm excited about that. I haven't done that yet, I don't think.

HAMADA: For me, I think the thing that I've been focused on is, we were talking about this earlier at dinner, it's gateway horror. I want to make a horror movie for, like, a kid’s first horror movie. I've done a lot of very over-the-top, R-rated scary movies. I really want to do a gateway horror movie. I want to do a movie for little kids who remember, “Oh, that was my first horror movie.” For a lot of us, it was It, but maybe something that's a little more appropriate for some of these kids.

I was about to make a comment, but then I reminded myself, “You're not a good judge of what's appropriate for tiny children.”

DAUBERMAN: It should be a little inappropriate, though. You don't want to make it so appropriate.

DONOHUE: This is a curveball. Remake is what I immediately went to, and a lot of people are talking about remaking big properties, and I would want to remake something that is more of a cult movie, that maybe needs a little bit more appreciation. There's a movie called The Sentinel that I always really liked. It's a demonic movie in a giant apartment building in New York City. I always thought it was super creepy. I think it's ripe for a remake, and so I'm putting that out into the world.

That's what I'm here for. You put it out into the world, it happens, and then we do a Collider screening for it! It'll be great. I am going to say huge congratulations on Passenger.

'Passenger's Set Got So Creepy, the Team Actually Called in a Priest

"Nobody died."

Collider also spoke with the stars of Passenger, Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio, who play Maddie and Tyler in their first-ever horror roles. During their conversation with Nemiroff, which you can check out in the video above, with time codes below, the duo share the horror movies that not only convinced them they had to be a part of the genre, but the ones that were so unforgettable, they changed their day-to-day lives completely! They also share a fun story from the time before shooting spent building their characters together, hidden details from the van, and reveal why Scipio insisted on having a priest come bless the set.

00:12 - These Movies Made Passenger’s Stars Hungry for Horror
01:16 - Horror Movies That Changed Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio’s Real-Life Habits
02:36 - The Moment They Knew Their On-Screen Chemistry Worked
04:01 - The Duo Reveal Why They Brought a Priest to Set
05:41 - Llobell and Scipio Share Their Real-Life Good Luck Charms
06:49 - Check Out These Hidden Van Details

[Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Passenger]

How André Øvredal Pulled Off That Three-Minute Oner (And Why It Was Essential)

Øvredal discusses his most impactful script changes and creating the Passenger.

In addition to talking with the writer and producers at the Q&A, Nemiroff had the opportunity to chat with filmmaker André Øvredal about his vision for the movie. Having helmed genre favorites like Troll Hunter and the atmospheric The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Hamada was thrilled to collaborate with Øvredal on Passenger, who lent his insight to script changes that transformed the ending of the film, and worked closely with Lopez on the unsettling movements of the Passenger itself. Don’t miss the full conversation in the video above, with time codes below, where Øvredal discusses how he employed Guillermo del Toro’s passion for color language, how Oscar-winner Melissa Leo reacted to her gruesome death scene, and what’s in the works for the director.

00:11 - André Øvredal Shares His Personal Ideas That Changed the Script
01:16 - What Was Passenger’s Original Ending Before the Church Twist?
02:25 - Øvredal on Working With Joseph Lopez to Create Passenger’s Eerie Movement
03:58 - The Director Breaks Down the Film’s 3-Minute One-Take Shot
05:44 - Oscar-Winner Melissa Leo Was “So Game” for Her Brual Death Scene
07:02 - How Guillermo del Toro Inspired the Van’s Most Crucial Detail
09:24 - What’s Still on Øvredal’s Horror Filmmaking Bucket List?

Passenger is in theaters now.