Hollywood director to visit Davenport for ‘A Quiet Place’ premiere

The Last Picture House in Davenport will be anything but “a quiet place” on the evening of Saturday, June 29. That’s when Hollywood director Michael Sarnoski will be visiting the independent cinema for a special screening of " A Quiet Place: Day One ."

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the filmmaking duo behind A Quiet Place , will be on hand to moderate an in-person Q&A with Sarnoski following the screening of the new film. Beck and Woods, who are Iowa natives, are also co-owners of The Last Picture House.

The special event takes place over the premiere weekend of A Quiet Place: Day One , which opens in theaters nationwide and at The Last Picture House on Thursday, June 27. It also serves as the culmination of a three-film series featuring movies that inspired A Quiet Place , which Beck and Woods hosted throughout June.

Beck described the thought process behind the month-long series, which was the first special event he and Woods hosted at the theater.

“This is the first one that we're hosting, and it felt kind of natural, given the anticipation of Day One coming out, to finally retrace the movie that kind of gestated our careers but also allowed us the trajectory to then open up The Last Picture House in Davenport,” Beck said.

Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, A Quiet Place , released in 2018, follows a family’s attempts to survive in the midst of sightless aliens that hunt by sound. A Quiet Place: Day One serves as a prequel to the original film, and explores the origins of the alien invasion — this time, from the vantage point of New York City.

Woods discussed how the new film, which is written and directed by Sarnoski, differs from the rural backdrop he and Beck had used.

“What audiences should expect for this movie is kind of a different flavor of sorts. The original movie takes place on a farm. It's very much written about our backyard in Iowa with the cornfields and farmland,” Woods said. “So I hope people are excited to see not only the origin of the invasion from A Quiet Place but also transplanting that from ‘a quiet place’ to the loudest place on earth, which is New York City. And seeing how that kind of dynamic plays out is going to be really exciting.”

Before taking the helm of A Quiet Place , Sarnoski stunned critics and audiences with his 2021 film Pig — a deceptively moving drama about a truffle hunter starring Nicolas Cage. Beck described his and Woods’ reactions when they learned that Sarnoski would be the next director in their horror franchise.

“As soon as we heard that that voice was going to be taking on A Quiet Place , that, to us, was an exciting breath of fresh air,” Beck said. “His care for characters, his love of telling a genre story, but in a very intimate way, felt like the exact DNA that Bryan and I really ingested into the original movie.”

According to Beck, Sarnoski took great care to anchor the post-apocalyptic story with a focus on character relationships.

“He's focusing on just this small group of characters that are going through the largest catastrophe you could ever imagine happening,” Beck explained. “And so, while it kind of explodes the scale of what the franchise has been, it's really exciting to know it's in the hands of a filmmaker that focuses on intimacy between characters.”

A Quiet Place: Day One stars Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o alongside Joseph Quinn, who previously portrayed Eddie Munson in the Netflix sci-fi series Stranger Things . Ticket sales for the special Q&A event open to the general public on Thursday, June 20. More information and tickets for other showtimes are available at The Last Picture House .