Brolin, Austin Abrams, director Brian Duffield, and author/screenwriter Daniel Krause talk to Polygon about the new movie

Whalefall is now in theaters. Based on the novel by Daniel Kraus (Angel Down), who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You, Cocaine Bear), Whalefall is about a scuba diver (Austin Abrams) looking for the remains of his father (Josh Brolin) in the Pacific Ocean. However, while he’s on his expedition, he gets swallowed by an enormous sperm whale. With only an hour’s worth of oxygen, he must free himself from inside the whale.

While at New York Comic Con 2026, a week before the film’s release, Polygon caught up with stars Josh Brolin and Austin Abrams, as well as Kraus and Duffield, to talk about the biggest challenges of bringing this book to the big screen, as well as what the movie is really about.

According to Kraus, the toughest part of the inside-the-whale experience was bringing to life the stomach of the whale — or, more accurately, the first stomach, as sperm whale stomachs consist of four separate chambers.

“In the book, everything was equally difficult because I'm not a whale scientist. I was learning from the whale scientists and biologists and diving experts and trying to visualize it, looking at pictures and dissected parts, trying to figure this out. As difficult as that was, it's much more difficult in the movie. I can obscure things in the writing, but in the movie, you have to build it and it all has to be there.

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