Adam Sztykiel Swaps Blockbuster Chaos for Directing Debut Let's Have Kids!
After years working on big movies in which monsters and supervillains wreak havoc and cities are destroyed, Adam Sztykiel has made his directing debut with a comedy about two friends trying to get pregnant. That film is Let's Have Kids!, he told The Hollywood Reporter. The heroes here do not save the world.
Directing means leading the cast and crew and deciding how the story looks and feels on screen. It is a different job from writing, and this is the first time Sztykiel has taken it on, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Let's Have Kids! centres on two lifelong best friends who decide to get pregnant at the same time. A comedy, in industry terms, is a film designed to make audiences laugh. Here the plan is simple. The friends want to navigate pregnancy and motherhood together. That friendship is tested when only one of them gets pregnant, according to The Hollywood Reporter. One moves ahead. The other does not.
Karen Gillan and Zoë Chao star as the central pair, according to People. To star means to carry the story and appear through most of it. Max Greenfield also appears in the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. An appearance usually means a smaller role alongside the leads.
Sztykiel co-wrote the script with Ellie Knaus, who is his wife, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Co-writing means the two shaped the story and dialogue together. A writer-director arrives on set already knowing how every line was written to sound. That shared history can make the shoot feel more personal.
The film is an MRC comedy, according to Deadline. MRC is the company behind the production. Deadline reported the casting of Gillan and Chao on 29 April 2024. Sztykiel has said his work in recent years centred on large-scale spectacle in which protagonists battle to save the world.
What makes this stand out is the shift in scale and humour. The focus is on friendship, timing and disappointment rather than falling cities. For viewers, that means watching a big-movie writer work with behaviour in a living room rather than destruction on a city street.
