Why Kate McKinnon Shows Her Dramatic Side in Hulu Sci-Fi Movie In the Blink of an Eye | Interview
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with In the Blink of an Eye director Andrew Stanton and writer Colby Day. They spoke about Kate McKinnon getting a dramatic role in the sci-fi movie, the film’s themes, and its unique structure. The film begins streaming on Hulu on February 27, 2026.
“Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life,” says the official synopsis for the film.
Tyler Treese: Andrew, it is so great to see Kate McKinnon in a more dramatic role.
Andrew Stanton: I know. If you’re the first to say that. Kudos to you. I’d give you a prize if I could.
She is so likable, and I feel like that’s key to this role because it’s mostly her talking to a computer by herself. What stood out about Kate and made you wanna cast her?
Stanton: Well, we were thinking of her as Claire, as when we were doing lists of names, me and my producer Jared Goldman. Then suddenly we just looked at each other, and we go, “Wait a minute.” We both thought of Being There, and how Peter Sellers suddenly underplayed this one character, and how much power there was in holding back all that comedic expectation, both from the audience and just how attractive that was. I felt that there was potential for Kate to carry the same, and I think she did.
Colby, this film explores the real constants of the human experience, family, companionship, death, and, and grief. Whether it’s 40,000 B.C. or in the future, what’s important hasn’t really changed. I found that to be a really powerful statement. What made you wanna explore those themes with this kind of time-hopping narrative?
Colby Day: I went to the planetarium in New York, maybe when I was 18 and had first moved to New York, and they have a big map of the timeline of the universe. You walk through it, and you go up and up and up, and it’s the big bang to the formation of earth, and then humanity is like this long [pinching motion], and it just sort of gave me an existential crisis that has yet to end [laughs].
Andrew Stanton: But we’re all benefiting from that.
Colby Day: Yeah. But you know, I think when you start to zoom out and think about what does it mean to be here for not that long you start to sort of try to find the meaning of life a little bit. I wanted to, if only to reassure myself, get to talk about the idea that even if we don’t have very much time, the things we do do impact the people beyond us and ripple through time. So partly it was just to reassure my own anxiety.
There’s a wonderful environmental message to this film as well. So I feel like that kind of came out of anxiety as well, because I definitely feel that at times [laughs].
Andrew, we have these three separate, thematically-connected stories. What was the biggest challenge in making this film flow? Because you do have to constantly be shifting between them.
Andrew Stanton: That was it. It, I mean, all movies are broken up into little Lego pieces that you have to put back together. So you’re constantly compartmentalizing. That wasn’t the challenge. The challenge was that interweaving is never gonna stop. It’s like a song where you’re gonna have harmony from beginning to end. That I hadn’t seen or at least not seen much of. I loved the read of it, and I’ve loved the challenge of it. That challenge kept us going all the way through, even getting music scored on the film, like how to keep things feeling like they were interconnected, even when you were away from the other two storylines. But that was the thrill. That was why I wanted to make it, was to see if we could land that plane.
Thanks to Andrew Stanton and Colby Day for taking the time to talk about In the Blink of an Eye.
Source: Comingsoon.net