From Sundance to Netflix: The Making of Train Dreams with Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, Clint Bentley & Joel Edgerton

November 12, 2025·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar traveled to the Idaho panhandle and met Kootenai tribe members reintroducing sturgeon to rivers, which led to a shot of a 10-foot fish hanging from a pole — an image Bentley says he 'never would have thought of' without being there.

Lovely, lovely people, then Train Dreams. Giles opens warm and a little breathless, calling the film beautiful and critically acclaimed before rolling through the guests. The room has that loose filmmaker energy. Felicity Jones and Kerry Condon come in as the early star interviews, while Clint Bentley and Joel Edgerton sit closer to the deeper director-and-producer stretch. The strongest craft section is about adaptation. Bentley says he found the broad shape quickly, but the actual writing with Greg took much longer because the story is so delicate. That is where the episode gets useful. Train Dreams, as Bentley describes it, did not act like a conventional screenplay with obvious plot machinery, neat turns, or a big inciting incident. The difficulty was part of the appeal. He read the book five times, marked up every page, then had to let it go so the film could stop behaving like a copy and become a movie. Giles handles the structure question in practical terms. He points to the bridge moment, the family material, and the fire as events that gave the film shape, even while the story resists tidy screenwriting labels. Bentley treats that tension as the point. The conversation keeps returning to the difference between staying faithful to a book's spirit and hauling every page onto the screen. Joel Edgerton arrives near the emotional center, with the closing exchange leaning toward love, mourning, and a character moving through loss, though the excerpt keeps that part brief. Giles stays generous and direct. He thanks Joel, praises his work on Warrior, and closes by naming Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, Clint Bentley, and Joel Edgerton again. This is not a dry packet of press notes. It is a quick, affectionate making-of chat with one especially useful lesson: delicate material needs room to change when it moves from book to film.

As heard by us

A patient, practical look at adapting a delicate book into a film.

Train Dreams is treated here as a piece of craft, not a prestige object. Giles Alderson brings in Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, Clint Bentley, and Joel Edgerton, and keeps the conversation on structure, adaptation, and the awkward work of turning a quiet story into something…

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If you want the making-of story behind Train Dreams, this is the right lane for you.

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