Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka met in the Graduate program at Columbia Film School. Gatewood says, “We weren’t friends. We didn’t really hang out, but we had our first screenwriting class together and we liked each others’ writing.”

“We started to talk and found we had an uncanny similarities in terms of taste, what movies we liked, writers we liked, and in our second year, we started to write together.” Working on scripts and sharing beers, just for fun, the writers eventually found a path to make a career out of their partnership.

“Slowly, we stopped drinking as much as started writing more,” jokes Tanaka. “That’s how our partnership evolved.” Today, they’re known for The Sitter, Comrade Detective, Dice, Superstore, and the new Apple film, Sharper.

Described as “a con film in reverse,” the new movie stars Julianne Moore, John Lithgow, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith, and Briana Middleton. The mysterious description reads, “Motivations are suspect, and expectations are turned chaos, as a con artist takes on Manhattan billionaires.”

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