PEOPLE caught up with director Susanne Bier to get her reaction to the movie’s huge success and answer some burning fan questions.
“It’s almost unbelievable, I have to remind myself that it’s real because it’s so insanely huge,” Bier, 58, says of the movie. “It’s almost like a phenomenon. I don’t think any of us really anticipated it. You can be proud and really happy about a movie and feel that it’s a really great movie, but you can’t ever anticipate when the hype takes on.”
Where the heck did Felix (Machine Gun Kelly) and Lucy (Rosa Salazar) take the car?
I think [the grocery store] was their plan, but we don’t know! I think that that’s where they wanna go, but I actually think it’s quite exciting that we don’t know exactly where they went.
Why was Tom (Trevante Rhodes) the only one that survived with Malorie (Bullock) and the kids?
We saw her as someone who is lonely, and we wanted her to have love. And we also saw that that would enable her to deal with the kids and be as harsh as she is with the kids, and yet be relatable and emotionally attainable. I think that love story is beautiful, and I think it’s also part of why audiences love the movie.
How come Dr. Lapham (Parminder Nagra) shows up again at the end
I felt that it needed some real hope. And I thought having someone else survive, and having someone who she met at a point where she was in a kind of rejecting life, and having to meet at that point [where she’s embracing it] — I felt was a really warm and hopeful element to the ending. And it also makes us think, ‘Oh, there are other survivors!’ I think it does infuse the ending with a kind of grander hope than if she had not been there.
Any chance there will be a sequel to explore those other survivors?
We only just finished it! It’s funny, I’m kind of reading people asking for a sequel and I’m like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, we really just finished!’ So let’s just enjoy it for now.
Bird Box is now streaming on Netflix.
This article originally appeared in POEPLE.
