I had the honor of hanging out with a deadly frog in its culty habitat this summer. I took my invitation to the set of Frogman Returns seriously because I knew I would be in the presence of horror’s current amphibious king. Outside of eating too many snacks and bothering the crew about horror movies, I saw a few completely chaotic scenes being filmed. I have no idea how anything fits together, and no one would believe me if I tried to explain what I saw. However, I know I will be in the theater the day this sequel opens. Which is why I jumped at the chance to interview writer-director Anthony Cousins.
We talked all things Frogman, why his set was so chill, and when fans can expect to see this sequel.
Dread Central: I read somewhere that the final title card, “Frogman will return,” was initially a joke, and now we’re here. Can you speak more to the journey from joke to a highly anticipated sequel?
Anthony Cousins: The frogman will return thing was totally a joke. I definitely did not anticipate actually making a sequel. We had a lot of different ideas for what the sequel would be. What we ended up with, I think, is kind of a combination of all the best ideas. There are a lot of great ideas left over for if we make more movies, but the funny thing is, we could not settle on a title. For a while, we just called it Frogman 2, and I definitely didn’t want to call it Frogman 2. We talked about, like Frogman: Reckoning or Frogman: Redemption. I thought those were just silly, and I liked them for that reason. We talked about Bride of Frogman and Son of Frogman, but those didn’t really make sense.
Then at some point, Frogman Returns came to mind, and it was like, “Oh my God! That’s perfect.” I love returns as a title for a sequel, and it hasn’t been done in a long time, to my knowledge. And then realizing, we literally said at the end of the movie, frogman will return. So, Frogman Returns is the perfect title. So, I don’t know why it took us such a roundabout way to get there, but I’m happy we did. That joke just came from the way every Marvel movie has some sort of stinger at the end, promising the return of whatever character, so we really just did it as a joke. But I’m so happy that we’re actually back doing it.
Dread Central: Were you shocked by the almost immediate fan base Frogman found?
AC: I was incredibly shocked by the almost immediate fandom around Frogman. Because if you set out to make a movie, you do it because there’s some initial idea that has you really excited, and you’re like, there’s something awesome here. Then you kinda kill it for yourself over and over. You get disillusioned with the script, and then you get disillusioned while you’re shooting it. Then you’re in the editing room, and you’re like, “Oh my God. Is this even good?” By the time you put the movie out, you have been so overexposed to it and know it inside and out. Even if it’s good, or you’re like, “Okay, this is good enough, let’s call it a day.” You still, at least in my experience, just don’t know if it’s actually exciting. If anyone’s going to give a shit or think it’s cool because you, you cannot think it’s cool anymore.
You watch something a million times, and you know everything that is going to happen. You have no context anymore for how someone seeing it for the first time will feel. So you really just have to trust when people are telling you, “This is great. I really like it.” I really just have to trust that because I can’t see it that way at all, and I’m already going through that with the sequel now. We’re like editing the sequel, and I’m like, I don’t know, is this a big mistake?. But I have to trust that all these crazy things we did, we did because we thought it was going to be really cool. Hopefully, once it’s finished and people see it, they think it’s really cool too.
DC: Why do you think it resonates with so many people?
AC: I think probably for a lot of different reasons. I think ultimately it’s the fact that this came from a very, very genuine place for all of us. Like the story of Dallas kind of feeling like he hasn’t accomplished anything. You know, dreaming of being a filmmaker. I think anyone who has a dream, especially in any kind of art, can really relate to just feeling like you haven’t accomplished as much as you thought you would. Imposter syndrome is a very, very real thing for a lot of artists, including myself, and everyone I work with. So, I think that’s really relatable. We made a found footage movie because we genuinely love found footage. I think a lot of found footage movies get made by people who don’t fully understand it or appreciate it, for the reasons that it works so well.
We kept going back to movies like The Blair Witch Project that really set the standard. Like, this is what found footage is. This is what people love about it, this is what we love about it. This is what we’re trying not to copy, but to emulate, you know. Then, of course, our commitment to trying to do everything as practically as possible. I think that resonates a lot with the type of people who find our movie, because that is somewhat of a dying art form. It just means a lot when you know, like 99% of the movies that come out have all these VFX creatures. To have a guy in a creature costume, sadly, just really stands out these days cause nobody does that anymore. I think that means a lot to the kind of people who found our movie.
But I think ultimately what resonates with people, I’m guessing, is that it came from a very genuine place for us, just making the kind of movie that we would want to see. I think that comes through like one of my favorite movies of all time is the original Evil Dead. That movie is so rough, from the way it looks to the sets, to the acting, to the writing. It’s just a very, very rough movie, but I love it so much because you can just feel how much passion was put into it. You almost feel like you’re one of the friends behind the scenes there in the cabin making that movie. That was the movie that made me realize movies don’t have to be made by Hollywood. You can go out in the woods and make a movie with your friends, and that’s what we did. I think that really comes through even if people don’t realize that something they’re connecting to or not.
DC: The teaser nods heavily at Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. The internet is wondering what that means. Can you elaborate? Or do we have to wait and see?
AC: So, I miss the days when a lot of movies would shoot original footage just to be teaser trailers. That’s not something you see very often anymore, if at all. I really, really wanted to shoot something for Frogman Returns before we actually start shooting the movie. We built an entirely new suit for Frogman Returns because we needed to update it. You are going to see a lot more of it, and in a clearer resolution, so it needed to be better than the first movie. We also used the teaser trailer as kind of test footage. We just made the hand, but it was like, Okay, what’s a realistic Frogman hand look like versus the first movie. Then how do we match the rest of the suit to that?
So, yeah, I miss when teaser trailers were shot just to be teaser trailers, and the Leatherface one is that. I just really, really love it because it’s so crazy and ridiculous and has nothing to do with the movie. I just thought Frogman’s hand coming out of a swamp could catch the wand, the way that hand kind of throws out the chainsaw, I don’t know. It was just the image that I couldn’t get rid of.
DC: Why do you think cryptids and found footage are kind of the perfect combo for nightmare fuel?
AC: I think cryptids and found footage go together so well because any found footage movie is trying to emulate, whether intentional or not, the feeling you get when you see footage or photos of supposedly real-life cryptids. Which is usually just like a blurry, out-of-focus, disturbing image of a creature. I mean, that’s kind of what found footage is all about. So, to me, it’s a very obvious pairing to have cryptids enter a found footage space.
DC: What initially drew you to Frogman of all the cryptids?
AC: I love all cryptids. I thought I knew cryptids pretty well. I think I knew cryptids better than the average person, maybe. Then, when I found out about Frogman, and I did a deep dive into that, it really blew up the world for me. There’s like C-list, D-list, and E-list cryptids that you’ve never heard of, crazy, crazy things. Frogs are adorable. I love frogs; they’re cute, they’re funny. A human-sized frog is hilarious to me. I love Hell Comes to Frogtown, classic!
The fact that he has a wand just made my mind run wild. Like, if a human-sized frog really had a wand, why, how, what is he doing? Is he a wizard? What’s going on? These are not the kind of questions that come up with most cryptids. Most cryptids are just like, “Oh, what creature is that? Where did it come from? What real-world thing might’ve been that it got mistaken for?” So, Frogman was really unique in that way to me.
DC: What happened to Scotty was disgusting! So, I’m wondering on a scale of 1-10, how gross will Frogman Returns be? 1 being David Cronenberg’s The Brood and 10 being Cronenberg’s The Fly?
AC: I mean, Cronenberg is one of my favorite directors of all time. The Fly is my favorite movie of all time. I think whether I mean to or not, The Fly influences literally everything I do. There is a very, very big Fly influence in this movie for sure. I don’t know if we reach a 10 necessarily, if that’s the scale, but we sure fucking try. We really go for it. The first movie is going to seem…so insanely quaint and wholesome compared to what happens in this movie. So, I think we’re pushing like an eight or nine, maybe.
DC: Are we allowed to talk about plans for the Frogman Cinematic Universe (FCU) beyond Frogman Returns, yet? If so, what can we expect on the other side of this film?
AC: We have a lot of ideas. We definitely would love to do a third Frogman movie at least. I have an idea I’m really excited about for a Frogman prequel. I have ideas that would keep me busy for years for Frogman spinoff movies and exploring other cryptids. That’s kind of what we’re testing the waters with, like trying to set up and see if people are interested in more stories in this world with Frogman Returns. It does introduce a bigger world and more creatures and definitely sets us up to be able to expand into other stories if the opportunity seems worth it.
DC: Prequel?
AC: Yeah! Very culty and grungy.
DC: One of the things I appreciated about my time on set is that you have a pretty cool mix of local talent alongside people who flew in to be part of this movie. I love to see that because oftentimes it’s hard for Midwest folks to get a chance to work on something of this level. As you’re also based in Minnesota, is tapping into the local talent pool something you do on purpose? Or is it something that just happens naturally because you know cool people in the area?
AC: I mean, it comes pretty naturally. Obviously, because I’m from here, I’ve lived here most of my life and worked here a lot in my career. So, I just know so many people that I love working with and that I wanna work with. Also, just resources here are so much more plentiful than if I were to shoot out in LA, where I currently live. So, that’s a no-brainer to me, and then everyone that we flew in is our people that I’ve worked with in different ways. One actress I worked with on multiple projects in Chicago, so we flew her in. One actor I worked with on something in Georgia, so we flew him in.
I’ve jumped all over the U.S. working in film, and I’ve just met a lot of people that I’m like, “When I do my next thing, or when I do something big, I’d love to have you involved.” So, it was really special to me to be able to make a movie in Minnesota with a lot of my Minnesota friends. But bring in people from these different parts of my life, too. It was kind of crazy. It was like a super team-up movie. Like I was putting the Avengers together.
DC: Something I noticed is how calm the set was. I was there on days four and five of last week’s overnights, and everybody still seemed surprisingly chill. I saw the assistant director switch, I saw an important prop break a few times, etc., and (from an outsider’s perspective) no one ever seemed stressed. What is your secret to keeping the chaos to a minimum on a film with so many moving parts?
AC: I am as surprised as you are that it was stress-free, as it was. I think a huge part of it is that everyone just got along really, really well. Everyone was just having a blast and hanging out. Which just didn’t make it ever feel like work, or like, “Oh, my God! What time is it? Oh, my God. When is lunch?” For me, personally, I am very aware that my energy will ripple through everybody else, cast and crew. I’m kind of setting the tone. So, it’s very important to me to keep it fun, keep it calm, keep it peaceful. For me personally, internally, there are, of course, things I’m stressed out about and things that I’m worried about.
But for the most part, I spend months leading up to filming worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong. It’s almost like I am Doctor Strange in Infinity War. I have seen a million futures where the movie goes horribly wrong. So, if anything goes wrong on set, I’m really not that surprised. Nothing ever goes as badly as I have imagined it would. So, nothing can really faze me at that point because I’ve already seen the worst-case scenario in my head a million different ways. And, like, it’s never the worst-case scenario on set. Things will go wrong, but they’re pretty manageable compared to the things that I’ve worried about. So, to me, everything’s going great all the time.
DC: What’s one thing you’ve been dying to talk about regarding this movie (non-spoilers obviously) and haven’t been able to? Please spill.
AC: I’m so bad at this because I’m just so excited to talk about everything and all the spoilers I really shouldn’t. I will say, I’ve talked about how we’re trying something different. We are taking inspiration from my favorite sequels. The sequels that try to do something drastically different. They don’t follow the formula of the first movie. They’re like, how can we go in a very different direction? Those are my favorite kinds of movies. They’re big swings, and they’re also kind of risky. Obviously, it’s easier to follow the formula you set up and you know people liked, but I think the payoff is just so worth it. For me, I just don’t want to make the same movie twice. I want to try something new, and we really didn’t make the sequel that anybody was asking for. We made the sequel that we would’ve wanted to see.
Something that gives me a lot of hope is how excited everyone is for M3GAN 2.0, because that is exactly the kind of sequel that I want to see. M3GAN did the creepy doll movie, and now they’re like, “What if the creepy doll becomes a good guy and has a super suit and flies around? And it becomes like sci-fi action?” And I’m like, fuck yes. We already got the creepy doll movie, do something new. I’m so into it. That’s something we very much did. It was like we already did the lo-fi Blair Witch type found footage horror movie, and this time it was like, how do we do something crazy? Or, how do we do something bigger? We definitely delve into like sci-fi action, I would say. And the effects, we like, I don’t know, quadruple or more the level of practical effects that we’re doing.
DC: When should fans expect to see the film hop into festivals, theaters, etc?
AC: It’s too early to make promises, but we are trying really, really hard to play festivals this fall, which is insane. That’s like a crazy turnaround. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see the movie until 2026. I will say, absolutely, we will be out playing theaters and available in spring 2026 for sure. Maybe sooner.
DC: What’s next for you after Frogman Return wraps?
AC: I mean, I really hope another Frogman movie, or another Frogman Universe movie. Other than that, I have about a dozen scripts ready to go, and I’m trying very hard to get at least one of them made. I’ve got movies, I’m ready to make a bunch of movies. I’m just looking for money, so that’s what I’m not up to after Frogman Returns. The search for more money to make more movies. I hope I’m making something else by the end of the year, or at least know what I’m making next by the end of the year.
Categorized: Interviews
