Writer-director Martin McDonagh has spent about 15 years contemplating Wild Horse Nine, a story of CIA agents facing personal drama just weeks before the brutal right-wing coup in Chile in 1973.
“It’s probably gone through, I’d say, five fully different versions,” the Oscar winner says. “But this version with the CIA just went through two.”
The film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as a operatives who visit Easter Island (known to Polynesian natives as Rapa Nui) in the midst of orchestrating the military coup that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American liberal democracy.
Though set against the backdrop of the real-life American espionage that led to a 17-year military dictatorship, the film is rooted in the relationship between the two very broken Americans.
“There was a first version where it was very plot-based, and it wasn’t concentrated on the relationship between the two guys as much, or the love, I guess, between the two guys,” McDonagh says. “So, I knew in this final version to let plot twists and all that stuff go. It just had to be sort of a love story about these two guys.”
The characters are seemingly vacationing on the southeastern Pacific island famous for its “big head” stone monuments, known as moai. But as each charming scene passes by, it becomes a little bit clearer as to why the two are really there. The less viewers know going in, the better.
Martin McDonagh on Shooting Wild Horse Nine on Easter Island
Before McDonagh decided to focus on CIA agents, he was writing his main characters as relatives. He first visited the stunning location of Wild Horse Nine nearly two decades ago, while in post production on In Bruges, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
He was hoping the island might feel like a character.
“And it was. It was beautiful and mysterious, so I tried different versions of what the story might be,” says the London-born, Irish filmmaker. “It was always two guys, but it started with a father and son.”
It wasn’t until he dove back into his teenage interest in the Central Intelligence Agency — and its murky legacy of geopolitical destabilization — that everything clicked.
“The reasoning for it being on Easter Island wasn’t really part of the story, that much, through any of those versions, until about four years ago,” he continues. “I thought about tapping into the CIA and Chile and what they did there, which is a subject I’ve been fascinated and horrified by since my teens, actually. So, putting that aspect together with the island turned the father-and-son dynamic into the characters you see. But I think we’re still left with a gentle shadow of them being a father and son, or an old married couple.”
The bickering between Malkovich and Rockwell — and the mutual love and admiration beneath it all — powers the story forward, even as supporting players including Parker Posey, Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits light up every second they’re on screen.
“They’re all living legends,” McDonagh says.
Chilean actress Mariana Di Girólamo, meanwhile, who plays a leftist student hopeful for the future, is in many ways the heart of the film.
“Mariana, she’s so good; she’s a future living legend,” says McDonagh.
Di Girólamo has already had a great career in Latin film, television and theater, but may be poised for her English-speaking breakout in Wild Horse Nine.
Her natural grace and belief in the truth stand in stark contrast to the cruel, dark and jaded forces descending on her beautiful country.
Malkovich’s character is particularly affected by her youthful optimism — or naivety, from his point of view.
“That allows him to question what he’s been doing all these years; it’s her hope and dreams, which is, I guess, what Chile had in those early ’70s,” McDonagh says. “It’s the most important part of the story for me. And it could have gone very dark if they hadn’t connected properly.”
McDonagh’s biting sense of humor and the actors’ zesty delivery of it all keeps the movie in lighthearted territory almost throughout, even as it tangoes with existential questions about death, God, the afterlife, and the future of humanity in a world threatened by authoritarian regimes.
“This film is set historically, but having watched it with audiences now, you can’t help but see it through the prism of modern-day geopolitics and American politics,” McDonagh says. “It very weirdly feels very up to the minute somehow for me. Even interfering with another country’s democracy, that just keeps recurring in different and less-secretive ways these days.”
On top of the geopolitical strife that some commentators argue may have already started World War III, humanity is actively feeling the effects of global warming — a phrase coined by geochemist Wallace Broecker in 1975, two years after the Chilean coup. Add to that the open speculation from AI insiders about the possibility of death by superintelligence.
Despire it all, McDonagh remains optimistic. (You can read his and other filmmakers’ predictions for the future on page 52.)
A sense of hope gallops through the heart of Wild Horse Nine, culminating in a moment of redemption.
“I always kind of like that — to not have the villain be completely the villain in a thing, or at least not to judge them,” he says. “You let the viewer judge the characters, but you shouldn’t. And I know the actors don’t judge the characters they’re playing, because you’ll just be playing a villain if you do that.”
Malkovich and Rockwell’s playful dynamic makes their characters damn likeable, in spite of all their confirmed kills. Our affection for them stems partly from their lively delivery of McDonagh’s precise dialogue. Though they adhere to his script, they bounce around on lines, playing with timing and off of each other.
“I did want this to have more of an improvisational feel to it, for the first time ever, really,” the director explains. “Especially with Sam and John, I just wanted to give them the freedom to play around with the dialogue — not to play around with the lines, but just, almost like jazz on the offbeat, to come up with other repetitions.”
The new approach worked so well, both for capturing the best performances on set and enabling more discovery in the editing process, that McDonagh may loosen the reins in the future.
“I did enjoy, even in the filming of this one, just letting the actors be much more free,” he says. “So, I hope that’s going to continue from here on.”
Wild Horse Nine arrives in theaters Friday, from Searchlight Pictures.
Main image: John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Diego Araya Corvalán, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
