Sigourney Weaver Felt ‘A Monster Calls’ Was Like ‘a Perfect Marriage’

Sigourney Weaver felt A Monster Calls was the “perfect marriage” between a great director and a good story.

The 67-year-old actress stars alongside Felicity Jones, Toby Kebbell, Lewis MacDougall and Liam Neeson in the J. A. Bayona-directed fantasy movie, and has admitted she had a good feeling about the film from the outset.

She explained: “I did feel that way about this movie. I felt it was such a perfect marriage of a great director with an amazing story. I felt the story was a fantastic and surprising allegory but against a very real situation. I just felt it was very rich kind of … broth to get involved in. Also, for me, I’ve done a lot of bigger movies, and so I was very drawn to the idea of doing this very intimate story.”

The film centres on the fortunes of a young boy who tries to deal with the terminal illness of his mother and the stresses of being attacked by a local bully. But the boy’s life turns around when he encounters a giant humanoid yew tree.

Sigourney told Collider: “The script was very ambitious and I knew that Bayona would change it in a way. But I felt right away that we were in very good hands with Bayona and that they’d cast a very good cast … you could just tell at the reading that it was going to work. Bayona’s commitment to the film, you just knew that it was very important to him – and to all of us working on the film.”