Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and will open in theaters on Oct. 10, dramatizes the extraordinary life of Jeffrey Manchester, the Army veteran who became notorious in the late 1990s for robbing fast-food restaurants from their rooftops and later hiding out inside a Toys ‘R’ Us for months.
Channing Tatum plays Manchester, and Kirsten Dunst portrays a woman he becomes involved with during his time on the run. The film — written by Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn — draws on hundreds of hours of reporting, including conversations with Manchester from prison, interviews with family members, the woman identified in public records as Leigh Wainscott, the pastor of the church Manchester attended, and the sergeant who arrested him. The filmmakers filmed on location in Charlotte, where Manchester lived, refurbishing an abandoned Toys ‘R’ Us and stocking its shelves with retro toys sourced from sellers online.
Manchester was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to a term that Cianfrance has described as 45 years. Four years later, he escaped from a North Carolina prison and lived covertly in the Charlotte area. During the day he hid inside the vacant Toys ‘R’ Us and, according to accounts the filmmakers relied on, used baby monitors to keep watch for intruders. He later ventured out and developed a relationship with a woman he met at a local church. The movie frames many of Manchester’s acts — including the rooftop robberies of McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises — in the context of a man searching for family and stability.
Cianfrance, known for Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, said he initially sought to speak directly with Manchester before committing to the project. Manchester, he said, called him from maximum security prison; over four years he would call three or four times a week. That correspondence, Cianfrance said, helped shape the film’s tone and approach. “He told me, ‘You tell this story in whatever way you see fit,’" Cianfrance said.
The filmmakers have been explicit that Roofman is a dramatization rather than a literal retelling. Some scenes and characters are fictionalized or composited: the woman played by Dunst, for instance, did not in real life work at the toy store, and the film omits the vacant Circuit City next door that Manchester also used as a living space. A character played by LaKeith Stanfield is based on a fellow veteran who provided Manchester with false documents, but the filmmakers changed identifying details after Manchester declined to provide a real name.
Still, Cianfrance said he offered roles to people he interviewed and incorporated real locations and participants where possible. In one scene, real-life police officers who questioned Wainscott years ago appear onscreen; Cianfrance said he did not give them lines, and instead had them ask the same questions they asked two decades earlier as Dunst’s character responded. Wainscott, who has returned to visit Manchester in prison since the film began production, also appears in a small role as a crossing guard.
Co-writer Kirt Gunn said the filmmakers were surprised by the tone of memories shared by people who knew Manchester. “When you meet him, you understand how those things are not just possible but likely, because he’s like a 10-year-old boy and he has all of the foibles of being a 10-year-old boy," Gunn said, describing Manchester’s recklessness and capacity to see complexity in systems. Cianfrance said a conversation with Pastor Ron Smith about judgment and grace influenced the film’s moral perspective; Smith characterized the New Testament as being about grace, and Cianfrance said he chose to “err on the side of grace” in how he portrayed Manchester.
At times Roofman plays up the almost whimsical aspects of Manchester’s life on the run. The film includes scenes of Tatum’s character skating through the toy store in Heelys with a teddy bear strapped to his back, a sequence Cianfrance said came out of Tatum’s improvisation while the cast and crew were setting up a shot. Manchester, still incarcerated, has not seen the finished film but viewed a local-news clip of that sequence and told Cianfrance it made him happy. He reportedly joked at first about the casting — “You need to cast someone uglier,” he said — then later told Cianfrance that he and Tatum shared traits including athleticism and looks.
The film does not dismiss the harm Manchester caused. It depicts the consequences of his crimes for the people he loved and the community that pursued him. Cianfrance said that after production began, Wainscott and Pastor Smith resumed visiting Manchester in prison; both spoke to the filmmakers about him with warmth, Cianfrance said, describing Wainscott as recalling the relationship as an exciting period in her life even as she acknowledged the pain his actions later brought.
Roofman sits alongside Cianfrance’s earlier dark, character-driven films but leans into tonal shifts between gentle comedy and emotional gravity. The movie’s makers described a careful balance between dramatizing the oddities of Manchester’s story and acknowledging the legal and moral consequences that followed his escape and recapture.
The film’s appearance at TIFF marks the first major festival showing before its theatrical release. Viewers will be able to see Roofman in theaters on Oct. 10.
