When Maddie Ziegler first read the script for her new dramedy short “Kodar: The Primordial God of Light and Ether,” she immediately started googling the title character. With his ghostly complexion and horns protruding from his head, she assumed he was from the MCU or some other IP.
“I was doing all this research, but I was like, ‘I can’t find anything about him,’” Ziegler tells me.
Kodar actually comes from the imaginations of the film co-writers Will Ropp and Nick Skardarasy. “Also, it would have been a lot of money to use something from the MCU,” Ropp says, laughing.
The 11-minute short, which marks Ropp’s directorial debut, tells the story of a doctor (Skardarasy) with social anxiety disorder who has to deliver devasting news to a patient (Ziegler) while dressed as Kodar for Halloween. The two find a moment relief while bonding over their shared love of Kodar.
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“It was really cool to read something that had so much heart in just a few pages,” says Ziegler, who first met Ropp when they starred in the 2021 indie drama “The Fallout” with Jenna Ortega. “To be able to encapsulate this big story in such a short thing was just so special.”
The film was inspired by Skardarasy’s father, a doctor who dresses up for Halloween at his office. “Nick asked his dad, ‘What would happen if you had to give someone a really scary diagnosis while you were in a costume?’” Ropp says. “His dad said he didn’t have to worry that much about it because he’s a general practioner, but it still got Nick thinking about the idea. And once he told me, I was like, ‘I can totally see this as a short.’”
Why didn’t Ropp, who serves as producer alongside Natalie Rousseau, act in the film? Because his “The Way Back” director Ben Affleck told him not to. “Ben and [producer] Gavin O’Connor told me that the first movie you direct, you cannot be in,” Ropp recalls. “Ben just wanted to learn the ropes first when he directed ‘Gone Baby Gone.’ He said if you put yourself in it, you’re pulling double-duty. I just wanted to make something that was contained and small so I could learn before I do something on a larger scale.”
“Kodar” premieres Thursday at shortoftheweek.
