Death of a Unicorn Director Alex Scharfman on Crafting a Timely Dark Comedy

In Death of a Unicorn , Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd play a daughter and father who accidentally run over a unicorn on the way to an important meetingâone that could make or break their dealings with the dad’s mega-rich employer.

The idea just kind of came to me; the opening scene sort of splodged in my head somewhere and I don’t really know where that came from, but it took me a couple of years to even start exploring it.

The movie takes inspiration from creature features from the ’70s to ’ 90s , but also class satires in the sense of genre, like Luis BuÃuel’s The Exterminating Angel and [ Robert Altmanâs] Gosford Park .

Scharfman: "I'm so lucky Will is in the movie and delivers the performance that he did because I think it's wild and over the top and big".

Scharfman: "I love the puppets; they were so much fun" "It was really important throughout the whole process to have as much as possible practical elements in place, not just for the actors but for me composing shots," he said.

Death of a Unicorn opens this Friday .