In January 2025, as Olivia Newman prepared to direct her latest film in Vancouver, her world had literally gone up in smoke. Just days earlier, the Eaton Fire had destroyed her family’s home in Altadena, California. She, her husband — jazz musician and CalArts professor Steve Lehman — and their two children arrived in Canada with almost nothing: pajamas, school supplies, a well-worn copy of the board game Ticket to Ride, and a bottle of WhistlePig whiskey. Netflix had rushed them north for safety and stability.

What should have been a standard pre-production sprint became something far more profound. Newman was location scouting waterfront homes for Tova Sullivan, the quiet, grieving widow at the heart of Remarkably Bright Creatures. As she walked through one beautiful post-and-beam house after another, the professional task turned deeply personal. “I used to have a spatula. I used to have a closet full of junk,” she recalled thinking. Every pot holder, every piece of furniture, every ordinary domestic detail triggered waves of grief. “Going into other people’s houses is very triggering,” she said. “You’ll see a pot holder and think, ‘Oh my God, I just replaced our pot holders, and I loved them.’ It’s silly but it’s a constant visual reminder of everything you’ve lost.”

The irony was not lost on her. Here she was, adapting Shelby Van Pelt’s beloved 2022 novel about a woman navigating profound loss who finds unexpected connection with Marcellus, a clever giant Pacific octopus. The story, which blends humor, heartbreak, and quiet wonder, follows Tova (played by Sally Field) as she cleans the local aquarium at night and forms a remarkable bond with the escape-artist cephalopod, voiced by Alfred Molina. Along the way, she crosses paths with Cameron (Lewis Pullman), a lost young man with secrets of his own.

For Newman — whose previous film, Where the Crawdads Sing, also explored themes of isolation, nature, and resilience — the parallels between her life and the material became a lifeline. “The entirety of making Remarkably Bright Creatures is inextricably tied to losing our home,” she reflected. The house in Altadena, which she and Lehman bought in 2021 after reluctantly accepting Los Angeles as home, represented stability for the East Coast transplants. Its sudden disappearance left them unmoored.

Yet the film became therapeutic. Directing scenes where Tova speaks to Marcellus in the tank allowed Newman to process her own trauma through storytelling. Working with Field was particularly meaningful. The two-time Oscar winner brought decades of emotional depth to Tova’s quiet strength and dry humor. Newman has described every day on set with Field as a “masterclass.” The challenge of making Marcellus feel fully real — not just CGI spectacle — pushed the team to shoot practical plates and build real tanks so the octopus would exist in authentic space alongside the human actors.

The adaptation, which Newman co-wrote with John Whittington, stays faithful to the novel’s spirit while making necessary changes for the screen. The book’s surprise-hit status (over 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list) came from its unique blend of small-town drama, family secrets, and the delightful anthropomorphism of Marcellus’s chapters. On screen, that voice-over narration and the unlikely friendship drive the emotional core.

Now, as the film premieres on Netflix on May 8, 2026, Newman stands on the empty lot in Altadena where her house once stood, her dog Pepper by her side. The physical loss remains, but the process of creation has offered healing. “I definitely wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” she said of the fire, “but my incredible husband took on the heavy lifting… and this movie became a balm.”

In many ways, Remarkably Bright Creatures is more than just another book-to-screen adaptation. It’s a story about how connection — whether with a brilliant octopus or through the act of filmmaking itself — can pull us through darkness. Tova learns that even after devastating loss, life can surprise us with new bonds and understanding. Newman’s journey mirrors that lesson.

As audiences watch Sally Field deliver a tearful monologue to a mop bucket (with an octopus inside, of course), they may not know the personal stakes behind the camera. But that authenticity shines through. In a year when so many in California continue recovering from wildfires, Newman’s film arrives as both entertainment and quiet testimony: sometimes the most remarkably bright creatures — and the brightest parts of ourselves — emerge from the ashes.