Oscar-nominated filmmaker Derek Cianfrance discusses recreating a Toys “R” Us for ‘Roofman’ and bringing the unbelievable true story of Jeffrey Manchester to the screen.
“I always think I set up an aquarium of real life for my actors to swim in and then I give them a lot of freedom—and they really shine in that way.”
In this conversation, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance dives deep into the making of ‘Roofman,’ his unbelievable true-crime dramedy based on the real-life story of Jeff Manchester, the so-called “Roofman” who robbed McDonald’s and hid inside a toy store. Cianfrance reflects on his extensive research—over 400 hours of interviews with Manchester and those who knew him—and on building an entire Toys “R” Us from the ground up to immerse his cast, led by Channing Tatum, in authentic surroundings. He reveals moments too wild for the final cut, including a deleted Halloween scene, and shares his goal of evoking early-2000s nostalgia while grounding the film in emotional truth.
Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum), a veteran of the Army’s 82nd airborne division and struggling father, turns to an unusual brand of crime as a way of providing for his family—robbing 45 McDonald’s by cutting through their roofs, a streak that earns him his nickname: Roofman. After breaking out prison, he secretly takes up residence inside a Toys “R” Us, surviving undetected for months as he plans his next move. Everything changes when he falls for Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), a divorced mother who cannot resist him. As they get to know each other, his double life starts to unravel as authorities get closer to finding him. Arrested in 1999 and sentenced to 45 years at the Brown Creek Correctional Institution, Jeffrey Manchester broke out of prison in June 2004 by stowing himself under a truck—an epilogue reveals he attempted the same stunt in both 2009 and 2017.
Directed by Cianfrance from a script he wrote with Kirt Gunn, the film stars Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang and Peter Dinklage
Paramount Pictures released ‘Roofman’ in theaters on October 10, 2025.
Awards Focus: Even after attending the press conference in Toronto and finally having a chance to see the film last night, I still can’t believe this whole story happened.
Derek Cianfrance: I know. It is definitely a bit unbelievable. In my research of it, I spoke with Jeff Manchester probably for 400 hours, and maybe at the 200-hour mark of talking to him, I thought to myself, is this guy just conning me? I realized I needed to talk to some real people in his life so I talked to everyone that would talk to me: his mother, his brother, police chief that arrested him, the judge that sentenced him to 45 years, people who he locked in freezers at McDonald’s, his girlfriend Leigh, the pastor of the church, correctional officers, the dentist whose office he blew up, anyone who would talk to me. It turned out that all the things he was telling me were true and additionally, that my perception of him was also accurate.
Because here, I was talking to this guy on the phone, this hardened criminal, and I liked him. He was optimistic. He was jubilant. He’d spent nine years in solitary confinement after the events of this movie. When I talked to all these people in his life, I realized, no, that’s the same guy that they knew, too, and he wasn’t just conning me—that was actually accurate to who he was. So, yeah, it’s crazy.
But yeah, all that stuff. I mean, look, there was a moment when I talked to him where he said, “Derek, this is my life, but it’s your movie.” He was like, “I want you to make it the way you see fit.” There are adaptations to make things, to make the themes come out. But for the most part, it’s pretty accurate. Most of the stuff I changed are little details. He did put up surveillance cameras in the toy store out of baby monitors and watch the crew. He did blow up the dentist office and even crazier things that I couldn’t even put in the movie.
AF: How much ended up on the cutting room floor or how much did you initially have in the script and then end up cutting out just because it’s getting to be too long?
Cianfrance: Well, yeah. There’s so much of a life that this guy lived. We had to decide, first off, where did we start the story because he had an interesting childhood as well. We decided to start the story on this dilemma he was in when he got out of the military and he couldn’t quite make ends meet and he couldn’t quite provide for his family in the way that he wanted to. He noticed—because he had this power of observation—how these McDonald’s were very similar and so he started robbing these McDonald’s to provide for his family. We thought that was the best place to start the story because by robbing the McDonald’s and providing for his family, he eventually got taken from his family for doing that.
But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor, like the scene where he went out trick-or-treating in a giant bunny outfit and Leigh’s daughter, who he was trick-or-treating with, her hands got cold. Those Halloween costumes didn’t have pockets so he said, “We need to find scissors.” And she said, “Well, let’s go there.” She pointed to a police station and so they walked in a police station and he got a pair of scissors and just brashly and boldly walked into a police station in a giant bunny rabbit outfit. I shot that scene. As I was shooting it, I was just thinking, I can’t believe this happened. When I put it in the cut, I was like, this is just too much for people to take so I cut it out.
AF: Yeah. I was watching the credits last night and seeing the footage of the real people. It made me wonder if there’s going to be more when ‘Roofman’ comes out on home video.
Cianfrance: Oh, yeah, there’s a lot. I had one of my favorite documentary filmmakers, his name is Michael Del Monte. He’s a good friend of mine, Canadian filmmaker. He came down while we were shooting and did a lot of those interviews with the real people. And yeah, the bonus material on this film is vast.
AF: Yeah. I like the films when they have vast bonus features and not just, oh, here’s a trailer, that’s it.
Cianfrance: Exactly. No, there’s a lot. You’ll be fully entertained when you see it.
AF: Aside from bringing back Toys “R” Us to life, what was the most challenging aspect of making the film?
Cianfrance: Everything. As I was trying to pitch this movie to Hollywood, I kept hearing, “We don’t make this kind of movie anymore.” We didn’t have a healthy budget at all. There were certain aspects that I really thought were important to the film. One was to shoot on film because this took place in 2004 and I thought film would kind of elevate these locations. Two was to shoot it actually in the place where it happened. We shot it in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it happened.
And then three was building that toy store. And to build that toy store, it started out as a 45—we found an old abandoned Toys “R” Us and we basically brought it back to life. There was no tiles on the floor. All the electrical systems, all the copper had been stripped. We had to rebuild this place from the ground up. One tile at a time, one fluorescent light bulb at a time, one shelving unit at a time, and one Tickle-Me-Elmo at a time.
It took a lot of toys to fill up a toy store. But I did that because my producers were telling me as we were doing that, they were like, “We don’t have the budget to do this.” I was like, “I promised Channing I would build him a toy store.” Because I really want to immerse my actors in environments. Yeah. It pays off, I think, because they actually get to play. And when you see the movie, I don’t know if you felt this way, but the performances, all of the actors are very, very alive. I think it has to do with putting them in situations that are real and letting them—I always think I set up an aquarium of real life for my actors to swim in and then I give them a lot of freedom and they really shine in that way.
AF: Yeah. And then during the montage of filming the poster?
Cianfrance: Oh, yes, the poster for—yeah. The story about Jeff Manchester. He calls me a couple weeks ago and he says, “Where’d you get this idea of Channing Tatum in his underwear with the pool floating around his neck and a teddy bear on his shoulders? Where’d you guys think of that?” I was like, “Well, I built a toy store and I was shooting a scene, and Channing Tatum came around the corner and he looked like that.”
Channing said to me, “Let’s do a homage to ‘Risky Business.’” And so I was like, “We shot it.” And he was like, “That makes me so happy to hear that.” He was like, “When you live in a toy store for six months, it has a way to connect you to your inner child and I’m so happy Channing got connected to his.”
AF: Yeah. I imagine you all went through a lot of M&Ms.
Cianfrance: Oh, he ate a lot of M&Ms. Channing lost 70 pounds to be in this movie. When I met him in the summer before shooting, he was pretty big because he had done it for another role. He told me that he thought that Jeff Manchester should be very wiry so he could fit into small places. I was like, “Sure, it sounds good.” He showed up to set 70 pounds lighter and it was scary, honestly, because he had committed so much.
But then, he was on set and he was eating nothing but peanut M&Ms like his character. That’s not good for you to eat nothing but peanut M&Ms. I mean, the real Jeff Manchester did the same thing. He thought he was in heaven eating peanut M&Ms, but then he got 14 cavities.
AF: Was there ever a point in which people drove by the Toys “R” Us and thought it was actually open for business?
Cianfrance: It happened all the time that people thought that we brought that thing back to life because we did. It was a functional store. There was real toys on the shelves, real toys in all the boxes. There was price tags on them and there was money. People could have come in—they stopped by all the time and said, “You guys are back.” We’re like, “No, this is just a movie.”
We ended up shooting there for 11 days and after 11 days, it was so crazy because it was so much fun to go to work, honestly. Working at a toy store is fun! We went there. After 11 days, I had to leave for the last time and I was like, “We’re going to tear this thing down.” So after 11 days, I walked out of there and it’s totally gone now. If you go back to Pineville, North Carolina, this store is just an empty shell.
AF: So what happened to all the toys and video games?
Cianfrance: We donated them to a lot of charity organizations.
AF: Yeah. I don’t really think of movies set in the early 2000s as being period pieces, but you could definitely tell with the cell phones.
Cianfrance: Absolutely. I talked to my production designer about that a lot. I grew up in the 80s and she was like, “Derek, think about it. When we lived in the 80s and we saw footage from the 60s, it seemed like a lifetime ago.” I was like, “Geez, you’re right.” It’s a totally different decade. Early 2000s, it’s before the smartphone. It’s before Amazon.
It’s a time when people—I remember in those years, going on a weekend with my family to the store and my parents saying, “Okay, you can have one thing.” I’d go to the toy aisle and I’d spend 30 minutes there finding what toy—if it was a Hot Wheel race car or something that I would take home or a Masters of the Universe figurine that I would take home and then I would play with it. But it was a communal thing that our family did.
I think one of the things about this movie is I wanted to give the audience a sense of nostalgia because we live in such a divided time and things are so tough out there right now and not to say they weren’t in 2004, but there was a different sense of community, maybe, of people being together and being connected in that way, not everything online, and I just wanted to bring that sense back to the world.
AF: Thank you so much.
Cianfrance: Thank you. Very nice to meet you.