“Australia?” he says, visibly stoked. “I’m a huge Aussiephile. Australia means a lot to me because I’m Canadian and I grew up skiing and snowboarding, which means I grew up skiing and snowboarding with Australians. I love …” – he draws a name out of his memory – “… Civic Video. I love Chris Lilley. He’s a major influence on me, major, major. Peter Weir, I probably love him too much.”
Magic the Gathering
“Within 30 minutes, I was like, ‘Dom, we’re going to make this movie about Anthony Bourdain.’ It was us getting excited about exactly the things you see in the movie,” Johnson recalls. “A young man lying to create status. What’s it like to have all your self-worth tied up in how women see you. The power of homosocial relationships as a developmental tool. And then my job was to bring Bourdain into this conspiracy and read everything that he’d written and go, ‘Okay, let’s see where you agree with us.’”
In the wake of his two buzzy 2026 movies, Johnson is staying busy. He directed comedian and Tony actor Stavros Halkias’s upcoming Netflix special Uncle Stav. He’s developing a Toronto crime movie starring Finn Wolfhard for Neon, as well as a TSA comedy with Josh Safdie for A24. And he’s currently hard at work on a live-action Magic: The Gathering feature, while also chasing down a green light for the long-awaited third season of Nirvanna the Band the Show.