The Christophers couldn’t be more different from the two other tentpole productions Ian McKellen is shooting on either side of the intimate little Steven Soderbergh caper. McKellen and co-star Michaela Coel shot The Christophers in February 2025, just a few months before he reprised his role as Magneto in the mega-blockbuster Avengers: Doomsday. And he’s set to don the gray robes of Gandalf once again in The Hunt for Gollum.
Both are huge ensemble productions in which McKellen, more often than not, would be acting against a green screen instead of a fellow actor. But The Christophers, in which McKellen stars as a reclusive artist who forges an unlikely friendship with Coel’s artist, who’s been hired by his estranged children to forge his unfinished paintings, allowed McKellen a return to a kind of intimate, tactile style of performing that he’s honed for years on the stage.
