Picture Credit: Getty Images / Netflix
Director Matt Spicer agrees: it’s been far too long since he last directed a movie. Spicer made a great debut with Ingrid Goes West. Almost a decade after the release of the Aubrey Plaza-led dark comedy, people still talk about it – a feat for any movie. After nearly a decade of waiting, fans finally got another film from the filmmaker with Little Brother.
It’s a big comedy, the kind audiences would howl at when they were released in theaters more often back in the day. The movie stars John Cena and Eric André as two very different childhood friends from a Little Brother program reunited after years apart. Hijinks ensue.
Spicer delivers well-timed silliness and surprising sincerity among the pee gags and broken bones. Recently, the filmmaker spoke with What’s on Netflix about his long-awaited return to filmmaking.
Little Brother plays a little bit like an early- or mid-2000s summer comedy. You get unabashedly silly set pieces, like Eric André accidently and quickly destroying a car. How do you get the comedic timing for a scene like that just right?
That took a lot of planning because there are so many moving parts. There were a lot of meetings about, okay, here’s our location, here’s how many days we have, how do we break this down and how do we get all the different parts that we need and how much is VFX, how much is stunts, how much is Eric, how much is the stunt guy, how much is VFX?
It was one of those moments where I’m like, “God, this is such a fun job.” You’re having all these serious long meetings about, like, ‘So when the piss goes through the window…'” You’re literally having conversations about a man peeing out of a car. There are worse jobs in the world than having to have long conversations and meetings about this topic.
Little Brother. (L to R) Eric Andre as Marcus, John Cena as Rudd. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2026
[Laughs] Nobody has energy like Eric André’s. How do you know how much to let him run? How do you best harness the power of the sun with this guy?
He is as advertised. I would say the biggest surprise with him – you get all the crazy stuff that you expect, but what you don’t expect necessarily from seeing his work is how sweet and kindhearted he is. I think that’s why I liked this character because even though his character’s doing all this crazy stuff, he is doing it kind of out of this sweet love of John’s character. What he’s really looking for is connection.
The blend of those two tones is what drew me to this movie. My hope is that even if you are drawn in because you’re a fan of Eric or you’re a fan of comedy, you’re maybe surprised at how sweet it is at the end. It got me excited about it and got me excited about working with Eric.
Eric André and John Cena are well-paired here. What did you want to see out of their chemistry?
It was figuring out, like, how do we modulate this? John’s character is a little bit caught up in his own world and he’s got his reality show. He doesn’t have his priorities quite right. It was a lot of conversations like, “Okay, well, you still want the audience to be rooting for this guy. You don’t want to feel like he’s a lost cause, but you got to give him somewhere to go.”
Same thing for Eric’s character. Is this a moment where we want to go for the joke or do we want to play it a little bit more straight? You know that it’s not just The Eric André Show and that you’re actually playing a character and playing a role.
How do we find the right balance of all these different elements and these two different tones to the movie? A big piece of that is Michelle Monaghan. She’s the conduit with both of these guys. You’re like, “Okay, well, if she still loves this guy, there’s got to be something good about him.” You see how much he loves her, too.
I love her scenes with Eric because you get to see Eric’s sweet side with her in their first scene, watching their wedding video. Then, of course, later when they’re talking about how to reignite the spark in her marriage. I thought she was the secret weapon of the movie.
Little Brother. (L to R) Michelle Monaghan as Deirdre, John Cena as Rudd in Little Brother. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2026
Great seeing Michelle Monaghan get a big comedic set piece too.
No, I think that’s what drew her to want to do this. She was like, “I don’t get to be raunchy and funny a lot.” We don’t want her to just kind of be the wife character who’s like, “Come on, Rudd…”
Was it important to you to make not just a raunchy movie, but a sweet raunchy movie?
It’s important to have the heart. That’s my own taste. I have a very highfalutin taste. I love the Criterion Collection, but I also love Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Tommy Boy, and all those classic comedies. It’s fun to be silly and stupid, too.
Were you watching any movies on the Criterion Channel for inspiration for Little Brother?
[Laughs] Albert Brooks movies. He was so ahead of his time. I think his movies are still so sharp and funny and relevant and have just really held up. Comedies don’t always hold up that well over time, but his do. Lost in America, Defending Your Life, Real Life – I love them.
I think Eric has this old-school, almost Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, modern age vibe. It’s hard to do physical comedy and do it well. Eric has this willingness to hurl himself out of windows or down the stairs and has an understanding of his body and movement. He knows how to sell it. We’re so lucky to be living at the same time as Eric André, I think.
[Laughs] I agree. Despite how different the tones are, do you see any parallels between your last movie, Ingrid Goes West, and Little Brother?
Totally. I think it’s probably fair for people to be like, “Wait, that’s the same director?” If I’m being honest, there’s a lot of really silly, dumb comedy in Ingrid Goes West, too. I mean, all the Batman stuff, that just makes me laugh.
You have these sort of outsiders looking for love that, I would say, is a link. It’s something that shows up in a lot of the stuff that interests me. It’s people who maybe are looking for love, but not looking for it in the right way or going about it the right way.
Maybe Eric’s connection to Ingrid, if you were to draw a parallel between them, is that he’s got this kind of obsession. But I liked that this was a story about two guys, this male friendship versus the female friendship of Ingrid Goes West. To me, that made it feel different enough because male friendship is very different. Maybe tonally a little raunchier and more physical and all those things.
You can see some of Ingrid and John Cena’s character, too, someone valuing status or followers over relationships.
I honestly didn’t think about that, but I think it’s a very common problem now. It seems like everybody wants to be famous or clout-chasing, especially with everyone being so online. I think that makes a lot of sense. They ask kids now, “What do you want to be?” They’re like, “I want to be an influencer. I want to be famous.” It can be this hollow pursuit if it’s just fame for fame’s sake, but we tried to ground John’s character with his feelings of inferiority to his brother, who Chris Meloni plays.
Those two look like brothers.
It’s hard with someone like John Cena. He’s playing a regular guy, so you’re like, “How do you explain how physically strong this guy is?” And so, we were like, “Oh, he needs to be insecure.” He got so buff because of Meloni, who’s in great shape. He’s got to be bigger than Chris. “I’ve got to be in better shape than Chris.” We tried to find ways to ground John’s character as much as possible. It’s always funny when you see somebody as accomplished and successful as John playing someone who’s insecure and vain.
Little Brother. (L to R) John Cena as Rudd, Eric Andre as Marcus in Little Brother. Cr. Clifton Prescod/Netflix © 2026
It’s been nine years since your last movie, your debut movie too. Obviously, there was the pandemic followed by the strikes. You worked a lot on TV, too, but how great was it being back on a film set?
It was so great, and I agree it was too long. But that was the first thing that I said when I started making this movie. I was like, “God, I missed this.” I mean, I did a lot of TV. I think after Ingrid Goes West came out, it was kind of funny because movies weren’t having the moment back then that they’re having right now.
Back then, in 2017 when that came out, it was like, “Oh great, you had a movie that did well. Now let’s go do TV.” That was the thing to do, and I was really excited to be directing stuff. I did an episode of On Becoming a God in Central Florida and I did the Dollface pilot, I did Angelyne, and all cool projects.
Post-Angelyne, I was like, “All right, I got to focus and do my next movie.” Then the strikes happened. It was devastating timing.
But now that I’ve got a second movie under my belt, let’s keep going. I’m back in movie mode right now. I’ve got a few other things we’re kicking around, but hopefully it won’t be too long before the next one.
Excellent to hear. Happy to have another movie from you. I will leave you, you got a fantastic Michael Douglas joke in this movie.
[Laughs] Thank you. Thank you for not spoiling it. We’ll let people see that.
