Genres collide in Eric Roberts, who has answers they need but could never have expected.

Getting Lumina off the ground was no easy feat, and its behind-the-scenes story, of Covid-related delays, cast and crew turnover, and on-location shooting woes, might arguably be more interesting than the film itself. Gino McKoy wrote, directed, and produced Lumina, in addition to co-composing the soundtrack and serving as visual effects supervisor. He also composed and performed several original songs written just for the film.

At New York Comic Con 2024, Screen Rant interviewed Gino McKoy about his work on Lumina. He talks about how he deliberately crafted the off-the-wall tone of the film, discusses his personal belief in alien abductions, and shares some behind-the-scenes stories about how the movie changed over time, mainly due to the Coronavirus pandemic that shocked the world in 2020 and continues to reverberate through the motion picture industry to this day.

Lumina Filmmaker Gino McKoy Breaks Down The Film's Varied Influences

"I didn't want it to be a knockoff of Ridley... What inspired me was Fincher's Alien 3."

Screen Rant: The movie is called Lumina. Why should people go and see this movie? What's your pitch, as the guy who made it happen?

Gino McKoy: Lumina is a cult classic that mixes genres, that is entertaining, informative, and you'll never forget it.

There are so many directions you can go with this romantic story that becomes a conspiracy road movie, and then you've got friggin' aliens at the end, which is very exciting. Tell me the vibe that you wanted to go for when you were shooting. How claustrophobic, how fun, how scary? How do you want people to feel while they're watching?

Gino McKoy: I want people to enjoy themselves and laugh and get a certain amount of knowledge from it. When I first wrote this movie, I wrote it as a sci-fi comedy, really tongue in cheek and high camp. And then, I incorporated the horror element of it because aliens, of course. And at the same time, I met John McTiernan, and John wanted to direct one of my movies. And John did one of my favorite movies of all time, Predator.

So, I incorporated the aliens and the horror into it. And the romance came along because it's a catalyst for the lead. What's going to motivate him to go such lengths, to the ends of the earth, for someone he loves? I felt like having that theme in the movie really helped, because a lot of female audiences really gravitated to watch this sci-fi movie. That's why I was in there. That's why I spent so much time in character development.

Sure, sci-fi is sometimes seen as "just for boys."

Gino McKoy: I could have gone other routes, you know, with no character development, like what you see in a lot of sci-fi movies. Like, you know, some of the characters die and you don't even get to know them! I wanted people to get attached to these characters. I wanted them to really live and die with these characters throughout the entire three-act structure. And that was the reason why I spent so much time with that, really, to give the actors room to breathe. It was really open. I didn't want it to be claustrophobic. I always wanted to keep it open. You know, Ridley, when he was doing Alien, it was really claustrophobic, right? And I didn't want it to be a knockoff of Ridley, doing it that way. I wanted to do bigger tunnels, bigger stuff. Really, what inspired me was Fincher's Alien 3.

Okay. Because it's really hard to do "an alien movie" without doing Alien, right?

Gino McKoy: Exactly. You know what I mean. Because that stuff, it leaves an impression on you. You grow up watching (James) Cameron and George (Lucas) and all the other guys doing sci-fi and doing aliens. For me, I wanted to do something that was like really open, really funny, so people have fun with it. But at the same time, we're talking about real topics. I interviewed former Marines, former naval officers who saw UAPs. They've come across them in their field, in the field of battle, in reconnaissance missions, in platoons that they're in.

And they've also had experiences with abductions and stuff like that. And these are normal people. They have families. They have no mental illness. They're nothing like that, you know what I mean? They're really cool people, but they've experienced these extraordinary things. So that's what led me down that rabbit hole to do this type of movie. To see exactly what the psychological effects would be on the people around them. But at the same time, we're still keeping the light hearted. This movie is experimental.

It's doing a lot of different things.

Gino McKoy: You know, it's crazy because we had some critics say it has unintentional comedy. No, this was all deliberate. Everything about this movie is intentional comedy. That's how I wrote it. That's how I directed it. That's how we did improv on set. That was in the script. You know, so I intentionally went that way, but I wanted to have a serious tone to talk about this topic. Because all the congressional hearings right now and everything else, everything is coming up right now with the UAP. But I wanted it to still be fun. I didn't want to go down the route of being ultra serious, like Arrival and other movies. Because I felt like I wanted to still keep it really light hearted and fun and comedy. I initially wrote it as a sci-fi comedy, so that's why.

If you go too serious in the conspiracy stuff, then you're doing The X-Files.

Gino McKoy: X-Files and Fire in the Sky. What I tried to do was, I thought, "How can I take Guardians of the Galaxy, Alien, and Fire in the Sky and put it together?"

Those are like the big three for you for this one?

Gino McKoy: Romance, comedy, horror. Oh, and Predator. You know what I mean? Because I'm always inspired by Predator. And I was thinking, how could I do that? For me, it's not a problem for me to do a straight movie. Because I could write an Alien Romulus every month if I wanted to. Seriously speaking, because I have that ability. But I wanted to do something highly experimental with this movie to see if it would work. Because I know a lot of women that I knew in sci-fi, I mean, a lot of women in the movie industry don't like sci-fi! When they saw our movie, they were like, "I love this movie because it has that romantic element to it." It's an underlying love story.

Gino McKoy On Criticism Of Lumina's Unique Tone

"I felt the need to do something that was different. And that's why some people are already calling it a cult classic."

That's the secret of Terminator, right? "I traveled through time for you, Sarah."

Gino McKoy: Exactly, right? You know what I mean! So for me, it's kind of like I wanted to do that and that's the reason why I went down that road. And some people are like, "Why is there so much romance in it?" I'm like, well, the women love it. I'm actually getting them to see a sci-fi movie.

Attack of the Clones. The original YA movie.

Exactly. People condemned George when he first came out with Star Wars. There was so much vitriol when he came out with Star Wars. I'm a big Star Wars fan. I'm also a big comic book fan in general. But when George came out with that, the kind of opposition he faced, both on set and off set for his movies, and putting those elements into it, I thought that was revolutionary. He experimented with just mixed genres. There's nothing wrong with doing a mixed genre movie. I love things that are strictly just sci-fi, strictly just horror, strictly just comedy, but I really wanted to experiment and do it.

I like the way you talk about that. As an aside, I think if the internet was as strong of an influence as it is now, and as it was during the Star Wars sequel trilogy, if it was that strong during the prequel trilogy, I don't think he would have finished it. He would have just been like, "Screw this, it's not worth the hassle."

Gino McKoy: Oh, yeah, because you know why? He would have faced so much from people talking about it and saying, "This is a soap opera," and stuff like that. I'm like, no. Life is a soap opera.

Yeah. Life is not one genre.

Gino McKoy: You can cry one minute. You can laugh the next minute. You can be serious the next minute. You could go on a mission the next minute and never see the person again. Like some of the guys I've talked to in the military, they've gone on missions and they don't know if they'll come back home. Right. Life is suicide now. It could have a serious topic, but it could have comedy. It could have romance. And I feel like I wanted to do that, and that's the reason why I experimented with this film, because I felt the need to do something that was different. And that's why some people are already calling it a cult classic.

Gino McKoy On How The Coronavirus Pandemic Impacted Lumina

"We shot in probably the most difficult time there was to shoot a movie."

Tell me about the monster. Tell me about the alien. Tell me about the critter.

Gino McKoy: I helped design the monster itself with Todd Masters. Okay. So Todd worked on The Predator and a bunch of other movies and stuff like that. So he has a lot of experience with the Evil Dead and everything.

Legend.

Gino McKoy: Yeah. He's worked with a lot of people. Todd and I were friends, and we worked on this alien together. But the problem was, we shot during the pandemic. So I lost my entire camera team. They went to London. The second variant happened, and I lost my whole camera crew. Larry Smith, who worked with Kubrick, was my DP. And Raquel Gallego, who worked with Gabriel Beristain, is a good friend of mine who shot Black Widow. She took over, and was doing A-cam for me. So my A-cam operator took over and shot the rest of the movie. It was that crazy. From curfews to testing to flights being stopped, borders being trapped. We shot in probably the most difficult time there was to shoot a movie. I think we accomplished a lot. But... We tried to make everything possible, and it was a really, really tough movie to do.

Do you think the movie is a different movie than the one that you set out to make before the pandemic?

Gino McKoy: Oh, yeah, because we had a wide release prior to the pandemic. I mean, we had 2,500 screens locked in. And then all the theaters shut down! So then we were like, what are we going to do? And then we decided to shoot the movie. It was better to shoot the movie. So we decided, we're going to shoot this movie. And we went and we shot the movie. We shot this movie in Morocco. It was the biggest set built on the African continent. Over 50,000 square feet of sets. So only George did bigger sets in Tatooine, in Tunisia, but those were exterior. Our interior sets were the biggest in history on the African continent. First ever sci-fi shot in its entirety in Africa. It was very difficult because everything was shut down. But we got great crews, because they shoot a lot of big movies there.

Was there a town or a city that you were kind of anchored to?

Gino McKoy: Well, we shoot in Marrakech. We shot in Ouarzazate, where all the big studios shot Gladiator and Troy and everything else. And we shot in the Atlas Mountains. Basically in the Sahara, 70-degree incline, minus 15 degrees. Night shoots, you know. Rocks the size of this table. You know, and we did the big crash scene there. Like, we actually crashed that trailer. I bought an RV, a Breaking Bad-esque RV. And we threw it down that cliff and blew it up! I couldn't do that in LA! You know, Bureau of Land Management, wouldn't allow you to do that, you know. Because I first scouted, like, Trona Pinnacles, where they shot Star Trek and stuff like that. But they have such strict regulations to shoot there. We couldn't do the stuff we did. You can't move stuff. And they shut you down if you drive over a shrub. (Laughs)

Are shrubs endangered species?

Gino McKoy: But they're, like, you know, they're crazy with that. So, like, when we shot in Morocco, we had freedom to shoot everything, brother. That was the great thing about it. I never in my wildest dreams thought that, you know, people would associate my movie with a cult classic. I went out there to shoot a sci-fi movie, and to make a great movie. But so much happened. We lost our first cast. They walked out and left during the pandemic. I had to recast the movie in a week. I mean, it was crazy stuff that I faced during that time to shoot this movie.

Did you fault... Do you hold it against that first cast?

Gino McKoy: Oh, yeah. You know what? They got paid all their money, they got everything... And I got food poisoning during pre-production for 10 days! When I came out of food poisoning, they walked out two days afterwards. Didn't tell anybody. Didn't even tell their agents. And it was crazy.

And timeline-wise, where is this in the pandemic? When is it?

Gino McKoy: This is October 2020. The height of it. Oh, yeah.

Can you hold it against them that hard? That was a dangerous time...

Gino McKoy: Yeah, because you know what? Because they're in a five-star hotel! They had a private chef. We had a bubble! It was, like, twenty people in the hotel. You know, they had it isolated. You're tested all the time, but they refused to test the last time, and they left, they disappeared, and I had to recast the movie. And I ended up with a great cast.

Gino McKoy On Casting Eric Roberts In A Key Role For Lumina

"We would call him the space cowboy on set."

You got Eric Roberts!

Gino McKoy: At first, I had Christopher Plummer, who was supposed to play Tom. You know, Chris and I were good friends. And Chris got sick that year. I was going to fly to Connecticut with the crew before I went to Morocco and shoot Chris's part. But Chris was not well enough. He said, "After I get better, we'll do the movie and everything else." Sadly enough, a week after I wrapped the movie, Christopher ed away. Chris was a good friend of ours. Chris was an excellent actor. It would have been his last movie, because he had already shot Knives Out. Right. And then his next movie would have been my movie. And then he got sick.

Was Eric the first guy after?

Gino McKoy: I got interest from Nick Nolte, he wanted to do it. Jon Voight wanted to do it too, but they didn't want to fly out because of the pandemic. But then Eric was like... Eric was brave enough. He decided to come out. Eric was great. Eric is a chameleon.

As soon as I saw him with the cowboy hat in the trailer, I'm like, oh, yeah. Love it.

Gino McKoy: We would call him the space cowboy on set. He was so funny. We were doing takes. We were doing improv on set. We were laughing all the time.

He might actually be an alien.

Gino McKoy: Ah. You may be right. (Laughs) It was crazy working with Eric. It was his first time shooting in Morocco and his first sci-fi.

Wow, I mean, he's been in, like, a thousand movies and it's his first time shooting there? It's wild.

Gino McKoy: He'd never shot a movie in Morocco. And yeah, we had fun with it, man. It's so tongue-in-cheek. Our movie is so tongue-in-cheek. Despite the fact that we're dealing with real topics. But I like that because on set, we were laughing. We're having fun with it. We're doing our takes and everything else but I love doing improv takes with my actors. And they improv and do a lot of stuff. I like that because you got to bring the lighthearted side to it. It's entertainment. You want to be fun.

Gino McKoy Shares His Hopes For Lumina's Future

"I want people to give it a chance."

Do you want this to be like the midnight movie?

Gino McKoy: I do. I think it will be. It could happen.

Some people might take offense to that, like, "My movie is not a B-movie! How dare you!"

Gino McKoy: But you know what? It's not a B movie but the thing is, though, because the way how some people define movies these days... If you don't have a big name in it, it's a B-movie. But that's not necessarily the case. I'm going to give you an example. When I saw City of God. Everybody didn't see City of God. Brazil came out with that movie. It came to Blockbuster first. Right? And I saw it and I told my friends I saw this great movie, City of God, from Brazil. They're like, "That's a B-movie. It's a foreign B-movie." I'm like, no it's not. It's a good movie! Right?

Because the bottom line is, it comes down to the actors and the story. You can watch great movies with like the biggest name actors, but they have a B-script. And it's not good. Or you can watch a really good movie with actors who are willing to live and die for that movie. And it turns into an A-movie. But because of these standards that we have in Hollywood right now which I don't agree with... Because there's no big A-list actors in this movie then it's not an A-movie. Our movie is an A movie. It was shot that way. You know, you got guys like Larry Smith and Raquel and editors like Thom Noble, my editor who's an Oscar winner who worked with Ridley Scott, who worked with some of the biggest directors.

Even my friend, Dan Bradley, who worked with Steven Spielberg, who did Indiana Jones you know he's the best second unit director and stunt coordinator in the industry. He came and saw my movie and said, "You did such an amazing job in this movie." He's like, "This looks like a big studio movie, despite the fact you have such a smaller budget and worked with actors that are only now coming up." And just hearing that from my colleagues in the industry that work with the biggest directors and actors and studios in the industry, hearing them say this is a quality movie... I want people to see it that way. I want people to give it a chance.

Totally. You want people to give it a chance. Don't watch the next superhero movie ten times. Watch it nine times and then watch this!

Gino McKoy: Watch independents. If independents die, there's nothing left. That's 80% of our industry.

And it's where it's where you discover the talent. So I'm so glad you know we shot it a while ago and now it's finally getting its real moment here at New York Comic Con. Where can people see the movie?

Gino McKoy: I partnered with my friend of mine who did ParaFlixx. It's a new streaming network that does Paranormal and Sci-Fi. It's a new streaming network that's coming out. It's going to be on there this week. And then it's releasing on Amazon and all the other platforms. And then, on November 1st, it's coming out in theaters in Canada nationwide.

Any last message for people who are going to see the movie?

Gino McKoy: I hope you enjoy the movie. Just , it's tongue-in-cheek. It's comedy. It's everything. I love keeping the audience interested. On their toes. Expect the unexpected. It's fun to see somebody be like, "What the hell?"

More About Lumina (2024)

Lumina follows Alex and his three companions as they desperately search for Alex’s inexplicably abducted girlfriend, Tatiana. The quartet ventures from Los Angeles to the sands of the Sahara in search of a deep underground military base to unravel the mystery. On their journey, they encounter a myriad of shadowy, dangerous individuals, including enigmatic Area 51 expert Thom (played by Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts). Whether the group finds Tatiana or not, their lives will be changed forever.

Check out our other NYCC 2024 interviews here:

• The Penguin Cast & Crew
• Lumina Stars Andrea Tavadar, Ken Lawson, and Sidney Nicole Rogers
• Jason Blum on Blumhouse 2025 Slate