Doha Film Festival 2025: Steven Soderbergh on ‘The Christophers,’ His John Lennon Doc, and Why Today’s Box-Office Climate Is Squeezing Young Filmmakers

Steven Soderbergh has spent nearly four decades shapeshifting across genres, budgets and formats, building one of the most versatile bodies of work in contemporary cinema. Yet the Oscar-winning filmmaker believes the next generation of storytellers finds itself on far more precarious footing, with the pressure of box-office viability hanging like a sword over emerging voices.

Speaking at the Doha Film Festival 2025, where he presented the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) premiere of his latest black comedy The Christophers, starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, Soderbergh said the tension between artistic instinct and commercial survival has become sharper than ever.

“The pressure always exists. It's a popular art form and you make these things for people to see them,” Soderbergh said during a press conference, answering a question from The Hollywood Reporter India.

“In fact, Michael and I were just talking about how to find the overlap between the kind of stories that we like to tell and stories that can work in the marketplace. If you keep making films that nobody goes to see, people will not pay you to make films. But it’s not a complaint because it would be like complaining about the weather,” he added.

Soderbergh, whose career spans studio blockbusters such as the Ocean’s trilogy and the Magic Mike films, and a long line of boundary-pushing indies—Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Kafka, Bubble and Unsane among others—said constant adaptation is essential for filmmakers trying to survive the industry’s shifting economics.

“It's the artist's job to adapt. I'm very conscious of wanting to make stories that I feel connected to and that also have the possibility of reaching an audience, potentially a large audience. So, it's something I think about a lot. I was very fortunate to begin my career when I did because I think it's much harder now for young filmmakers than when I started.”

A still from ‘The Christophers'

Asked whether he ever felt tempted to chase a purely commercial box-office film, Soderbergh laughed and added, “I’ve never been tempted to do that. In fact, everything I’ve made I would’ve made it for free. And sometimes I have to be in love with it or I just can’t solve any other problem.”

At the festival, Soderbergh also revealed that he is close to completing his next feature documentary anchored on the final interview of legend John Lenon, hours before he was shot dead outside his New York apparent in 1980.

“It’s almost done and I’m really excited about it. The interview is an incredible historical document, and so the job is to obviously present it in such a way that enhances it and doesn’t distract from it. I’m not looking to reinvent the form. I’m just hoping to create a film that gets as many people to hear what John and Yoko had to say on that afternoon before he was killed,” he added.