Director Shawn Simmons Talks “Eenie Meanie” Car Chases, Challenges & More | Exclusive Interview

August 20, 2025 Roger Palmer

This month, 20th Century Studios is releasing a brand new original film called “Eenie Meanie” onto Hulu and Disney+ around the world. The film follows a former teenage getaway driver who is dragged back into her unsavoury past when a previous employer offers her the chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend. It stars Samara Weaving, along with Karl Glusman, Jermaine Fowler, Marshawn Lynch, Randall Park, with Steve Zahn and Andy Garcia.

Recently, I got to speak with Shawn Simmons, who is the director and writer of the movie, to talk about this upcoming film and asked him about the challenges in making it, along with transitioning from TV to movies.

How did you find the transition from writing to directing for the first time?

Well, the transition, I think, was really found in showrunning a TV show, which is a very, very close, you know, to directing. I hadn’t planned on directing at that time. I’d been writing for TV for a very, you know, long period of my life. And then as I was showrunning, people kept coming up to me and asking, You’re very picky about every single thing, from like buttons on shirts to hair to, you know, every song is in the script. You know, are you going to direct? And I said, I don’t think so. And then the good people at Disney here took a shot on me through my vision for my TV show, had faith and so the transition was it there’s always something new to learn every single job you do but it felt it felt you know as easy as some a job like this complicated could really be you know I felt like i’d already done it to some degree having done the TV show.

And what were the differences working on a movie, compared to TV shows?

TV gives you the ability to really dig into characters in a way that you don’t in film. You know, when you go to the movie process, you really have to figure out how in the really short bursts, you can introduce these characters in ways that people feel like they left a mark. Now, I always think that, you know, that’s the apartment’s my favorite movie. I feel like that’s the greatest anyone’s ever done it. You know, every single character in that movie makes a mark very quickly. And having come through comedy. Comedy is also a great way to tell a character story. So it’s just about trying. It’s always a fight to get as much character stuff in there as you can so that they. This movie requires people to feel a lot by the end of the movie, as you know. And that’s the challenge of movies for me, because TV, you can have character episodes in the middle of a season and all that. And here you really have to get to it quick and go.

What was the biggest challenge for you in making “Eenie Meenie”?

Well, we’re definitely in this world where budgets are smaller than they should be because we’re dealing with streaming, we’re dealing with theatrical, you know, trying to find ways to overlap the car work with the rest of the movie. We found certain ways to do stuff up front. Me and Paul Jennings, incredible director, stunt guy from “The Dark Knight” and one of my favorite car chases, “Jack Reacher”, which I based this kind of movie on style-wise. We kind got so much done together in the vision of those car chases that it allowed me to go off to one set and do the character work. And anytime they needed me with the characters and the actors on that set, I’d jump over there. So that’s one way in which we accomplished the movie in a way that the budget probably wouldn’t allow otherwise. Getting ahead of myself.

And one of the things I loved about the movie, was how it looked like it was nearly all filmed using real cars rather than lots of CGI. Was the budget a massive part of that as well, as it just looked better?

Yeah, it does. I mean, listen, you’re really emotionally engaged when they’re in the car like that. We we it was hell or high water, you know, trying to get everything to be as practical as you can. There’s always a little bit of VFX in the end that you have to do to patch stuff or fix some things later. But yeah, having him inside those cars does it all like “Jack Reacher”, you know, that first movie does the same thing. So I went out and got the guy who did “Jack Reacher” and it’s amazing how much of the money of the entire budget was put into just two car chases and the rest of the movie. So it was kind of my plan to have the rest of the movie feel like an indie movie a little bit. And then it explodes into these big scope practical car chases. And I hope the audience feels like, oh, wait, we’re doing that in this movie, you know? So, yeah, for sure.