Maggie Gyllenhaal loved working with her brother Jake Gyllenhaal on The Bride!.

The 48-year-old star has helmed the new gothic crime film, which draws inspiration from the 1935 movie Bride of Frankenstein - but Maggie admits that she was initially uncertain about whether she should work with her sibling or not.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Maggie shared: "When I realised it was, it was great.

"He's such an incredible singer, and I love hearing him sing. If you sit through all the credits, at the very end is one of his beautiful songs he sings. That was really a live, exciting connection, working with him on set."

Despite this, Maggie is keen to stress that her new movie isn't a musical.

The Hollywood star - who also wrote and co-produced the new film - said: "Can we just put to bed the thing about it being a musical? It is not a musical at all. That's a different form. I don't know why that keeps coming up."

The new movie features one particularly complex dance number, and Maggie can't believe that she actually managed to pull it off.

The actress-turned-director said: "I had 200 extras dancing, really important acting -- the major things we need in order to tell the story [in that scene], there's like 150 of them.

"My shot lists have 40 things on them per day. And because of Christian [Bale's] makeup -- it took six hours because it was so subtle and real -- it meant that sequence that he was in a lot of, we'd have to get slowly pushed [later every day]. We're all kind of exhausted and euphoric at the same time. It was a weird way of working."

Meanwhile, Jessie Buckley recently admitted that Maggie helped her to land a role in The Bride!.

The 36-year-old actress stars alongside the likes of Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, and Penelope Cruz in The Bride!, and Jessie is thankful that her modest online presence didn't count against her.

Jessie told Entertainment Weekly: "[Maggie] had to basically convince the powers that be that it didn't matter that I didn't have an Instagram account, that she only wanted me to do it. And I'm very, very grateful -- it's not an easy thing to do. And I also get it on behalf of the studio.

"It'd be way easier if I had a million Instagram followers for them. But I don't think that actually works.

"At the end of the day, you want a story to have life, and whatever the director or writer feels is the way to make that come to life, that's their choice."