Presence, a twisty haunted house thriller, marks the second collaboration between Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp.

The duo, who are longtime friends, also partnered on 2022’s Kimi, which featured Zoë Kravitz as an agoraphobic tech wiz.

Koepp wrote the screenplay for the 1992 black comedy Death Becomes Her, a cult favorite that was also a pioneer in its use of computer graphics.

“I hate it when people talk about things that they passed on,” Soderbergh said. “For whatever reason, I just feel like I am not convinced it’s good form to do that.”

“I do remember reading it and immediately thinking it was very funny. And also immediately recognizing that this is so far beyond my capability,” he said. “The technology they were using was intimidating. There was no universe in which I could do it. I knew you needed somebody with Zemeckis-like technical facility to execute it.”

“It was a hard ‘you got the wrong guy’ is what it was,” added Soderbergh.

Soderbergh decided to make smaller movie like “Kafka,” his black-and-white examination of surrealist writer Franz Kafka, which was a big failure, and King of the Hill, a modest coming-of-age indie drama.

Koepp would write “Jurassic Park,” which came out in 1993, a year after “Death Becomes Her” was released.

“I really wanted him to direct it, but he felt like it was a tough leap,” Koepp says of Soderbergh. “I’m stealing a line from Steven, but he really feels like he doesn’t want to do something if it’s not a ‘hell yes.’”

There were other projects that the duo considered, including a remake of the supernatural horror film “The Uninvited,” which didn’t come to fruition. “We kept getting hung up on the third act,” Soderbergh said.

The pair just sold a spy thriller, “Black Bag,” starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, to Focus Features.

Soderbergh’s Presence debuted at Sundance and got distribution deal from Neon, the indie studio behind the Oscar winning Parasite and the Oscar nominated Triangle of Sadness.

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