Instantly the buzziest Midnight entry at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival after a raucous, packed premiere at the Eccles, “Together” puts real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco through the emotional and physical wringer. Written and directed by Michael Shanks as a body-horror satire of his own relationship to relationships — specifically a long-term one with his own partner — the skin-crawling, not-for-the-squeamish indie tars Brie and Franco as spouses who give a whole new, grotesque meaning to the idea of codependency.

In the film, Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) relocate from the city to the countryside after she takes a new job teaching at an elementary school. Once there, a mysterious cave in the woods reveals a supernatural water source that draws them closer together — and in Lovecraftian body-horror terms.

Shanks, Brie, and Franco joined the IndieWire Studio presented by Dropbox at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival to talk about their new film — starting with whether or not the buzzed-about horror title (which features plenty of sex, contorted limbs, and crawling skin) tested Brie and Franco’s actual marriage.

“I think we thought it might [test our relationship] more than it did,” Brie said. “We went into knowing that because of the intimate nature of the film and how much time we’d be spending together, even though we’ve worked together before, Dave likes to say we would come out of it either getting divorced or becoming more codependent than ever.”

“It was the latter,” said Franco, who previously directed Brie in the horror movie “The Rental” and the 2023 romance “Somebody I Used to Know.” “This was like the most full-on thing we’ve ever done together. We’re very picky about what we choose to do, especially when we’re onscreen together, just because we don’t want to burn people out on us.”

“Or have it be distracting,” Brie said. “The fact that we’re a real-life couple fuels the viewer’s experience watching it.”

Franco pointed out that the production, which shot in Melbourne despite being set in New York state, had just 21 days. “Every single day, there was either a heavy prosthetic or really intense stunt sequences. We had to go in knowing that we were probably going to only get one or two takes per setup,” Franco said.

Did the actors struggle to separate their personal and professional lives, going to a set and going home together? “No. Luckily our relationship is much healthier than the couple in the movies, so it wasn’t difficult to leave their relationship on set,” Brie said.

Franco added, “When we’re on location for this movie, we really do live and breathe it, and we’re OK with the movie being our life. But when we’re home and writing something together, we need to put boundaries so we’re not only talking about work.”

“And when he says ‘we’ need to put up boundaries, he means ‘I’ need to put up boundaries because David would just keep writing any second of the day, brushing our teeth, about to fall asleep.”

Source: IndieWire

Alison Brie and Dave Franco are together in more ways than one.

The couple, married since 2017, costar and co-produce the new thriller Together, from writer-director Michael Shanks in his directorial debut. Brie, 42, and Franco, 39, debuted the film at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 26.

Speaking at PEOPLE and Entertainment Weekly’s Shutterstock Official Sundance Film Festival Portrait Studio, Brie and Franco joke that playing isolated couple Millie and Tim had real-world implications for their relationship. “I think we’re more codependent than ever,” quips Franco.

“Yeah,” agrees Brie with a laugh. “The film is about a codependent couple who’s sort of in a bit of a rut. They’re feeling dangerously codependent, having issues with that. And I think we went into it being like, ‘Our relationship is much healthier and everything’s good.’ And then we came out on the other side a little more codependent.”

“But because one of us will go off for a few months at a time [to film], we’re kind of forced to be independent, which balances everything out,” shares Franco.

“We like to have one person home with the cats, if possible,” he adds. “The loves of our lives.”

Together marks the duo’s first onscreen return since costarring in 2017’s The Little Hours and The Disaster Artist; Franco also directed his wife in 2023’s Somebody I Used to Know. “With a move to the countryside already testing the limits of a couple’s relationship, a supernatural encounter begins an extreme transformation of their love, their lives, and their flesh,” per a synopsis from Sundance.

“We want to be heavily involved in the creative process of the films that we’re making,” says Brie. “It’s nice also to be able to see something through to the end. As actors, you come in to shoot it and then you don’t see the film again until it’s finished. As producers, we get to be involved in the post-production process and editing and notes, and really, we get granular. We love it.”

Source: People

Stars of “Together,” Alison Brie and Dave Franco, talk about sharing clothes, working together, farts and what all couples need to do to be successful while answering our very important questions at ​​the L.A. Times Studios @ Sundance Film Festival presented by Chase Sapphire Reserve.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie talk collaborating together in the horror genre “Together”

Dave Franco and Alison Brie brought their new horror film “Together” to Sundance over the weekend, and sitting in TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt, the married creatives revealed how they balanced their real-life relationship with crafting an unsettling genre piece about co-dependency.

“The movie is about a co-dependent couple who have been together for over a decade,” Brie told TheWrap editor-in-chief and CEO Sharon Waxman. “They are in a little bit of a rut, and they move to the countryside, sort of away from their friends and community, and some weird things happen to them.”

While the film sounds like a relationship drama on the surface, Franco emphasized its horror elements: “This sounds like a relationship drama, and it is, but it’s also a full-on horror movie. The set pieces are like nothing you’ve seen in a horror movie. It’s very leaning into body horror.”

The couple, who have been married for eight years, served as producers on the project. Brie highlighted their collaborative approach: “We were very close with our writer-director Michael Shanks, so it was a true collaboration between the three of us. When I think about the shoot, it was so fun. Any time one of us was not on camera, we were behind the monitor with Shanks.”

Franco and Brie’s real-life marriage helped rather than hindered their portrayal of a troubled couple. “It’s only great,” Franco said, addressing potential concerns about playing an unhealthy relationship while being married in real life. “The confusing part was that in the movie, the couple that we play is going through a lot of hardships and [are] not in a great relationship.”

The film marks another collaboration between Brie and Franco, who previously worked together on 2023’s “Somebody I Used to Know” and 2020’s “The Rental.”

“Together” may not be their last venture into horror, either, as Franco revealed, “We currently have the seeds of an idea for another horror movie that we might write together.”

Source: The Wrap

Beloved Hollywood couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco have teamed up on the big screen a handful of times already but their new collaboration tests their coupledom in new and horrific ways. And they wouldn’t want it any other way.

“A lot of this film requires close proximity from its two leads to a greater extent than anything I’ve done before,” explains Brie of the film, Together, which will have a world premiere this weekend as part of the Sundance Film Festival. “I don’t know how you could make this movie without a real-life couple because of some of the situations we found ourselves in.”

To say much more would spoil the experience for festival audiences that have a chance to screen the film as part of Sundance’s Midnight section, so we’ll leave the honors with the official festival description: “With a move to the countryside already testing the limits of a couple’s relationship, a supernatural encounter begins an extreme transformation of their love, their lives and their flesh.”

It’s the work of Melbourne-based filmmaker Michael Shanks, who makes his feature directorial debut on the genre film after turning heads with a well-received short film, Rebooted, and a Blacklist screenplay, Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel. In a candid, careful and compliment-filled joint interview over Zoom — all three talked with intention in order to avoid spoilers — Brie, Franco and Shanks open up on how they came to collaborate on Together, the challenges of a quick and physically demanding shoot Down Under, and why codependency can actually be so scary.

How are you feeling on the eve of your world premiere?

FRANCO Shanks? I’m most curious how you’re feeling …

SHANKS I have the sort of disposition where things that are coming up in the future don’t become real to me until I’m just on the cusp of it. Now that I’m on the cusp of this, I’ve stopped sleeping and I’m starting to stress. But that’s good because it means that I can still actually feel excitement. I’m really, really looking forward to it, and it’s been lovely from my end of things. I live very far away from the industry and none of my friends work in the industry so the fact that this is happening has sent a buzz through my friend group. Everyone’s excited, so it’s really positive and really nice.

Michael, how are you with the cold? I hope you’ve packed some warm clothes.

SHANKS I packed as much warm clothing as possible but I’m not sure I can fully prepare for it because of where I live. I’m just completely unprepared for what winter in Utah is like.

FRANCO All of our producers seem most concerned about what Shanks is going to wear to the festival.

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Dave Franco and Alison Brie are set to rock the Sundance Film Festival with their horror movie “Together,” and the duo joined the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance to discuss their latest onscreen collaboration. Franco and Brie have been married since 2017.

“We love it and we want to keep going,” Franco said about acting together. “As long as people let us keep doing it, we feel like we’re getting away with something. For whatever reason, we work really well together. When we’re acting together, we’re so comfortable with each other and we can take more risks with the material. If one of us has an inauthentic moment the other sees it right away, so we have to do our best work.”

One thing Franco and Brie never do on film sets is give each other acting notes, and it’s because they don’t want to offend the other. As Brie explained: “We’re never giving each other notes because…it’s just like ew, I can tell that was false and I know Dave knows.”

“Together” hails from writer-director Michael Shanks and is world-premiering in the Midnight section of Sundance’s lineup. Franco and Brie play a strained couple who experience a supernatural force after trading city life for rural isolation. The duo said they look forward to solo projects after working together on such an intense movie.

“We don’t want to burn people out on us,” Franco said. “It’s nice to go off and then get excited again about working together.”

Brie added, “It’s helpful in maintaining our own independence. Plus, I love watching Dave’s work. So it’s fun when you go off and do your own work because it’s a treat for me to watch it. Also, it’s good to work with other people who you are not married to and have new experiences. These are good things for one’s life.”

Both actors agreed that it’s rewarding to star in horror movies because it requires the most full-bodied acting imaginable, which prompted Franco to shout out “The Substance” and Demi Moore’s Oscar-nominated performance. It’s rare for the Academy to nominate horror movies and acting roles.

“It’s cool Demi Moore is being recognized,” Franco said. “Actors in horror movies are doing so much!”

“The stakes have never been higher,” Brie added. “She’s incredible. It’s awesome.”

Source: Variety