Bad Times at the El Royale is a American neo-noir hyperlink thriller film written, directed, and produced by Drew Goddard. The plot centers on six strangers and an employee at the El Royale, a hotel located along the California β Nevada border, whose personal secrets intersect on a fateful night in the late s.
The film explores themes of morality, faith, and redemption, with the state border and other visual elements symbolizing the concept of right and wrong. Goddard began writing the spec script for the film in November , and compiled a list of songs into his screenplay.
After telling major studios to avoid buying the script if they could not buy the licenses for each piece of music, he sold it to 20th Century Fox in March Principal photography started in January with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and finished in April.
The El Royale hotel was built entirely on a studio set in Burnaby , Canada, under the supervision of production designer Martin Whist, who had envisioned designing a perfectly symmetrical hotel. Additional filming took place in the United States. During post-production , editing was completed by Lisa Lassek and the musical score was composed by Michael Giacchino.
Bad Times at the El Royale 's marketing efforts included posters, trailers, and television advertisements, stylized to evoke nostalgia of the noir genre and to make the movie stand out against other films in theaters.
