00:00Ready, set, and action!
00:09Well, about eight to nine years ago, I met Phil Shelby, who wrote the screenplay,
00:15and we started talking about a thriller that I was anxious to do, really concerning a woman on the run.
00:22I had written this a number of years ago, and he saw the potential in it.
00:27He told me there would be work to do, that we needed to bring certain things up.
00:32We spent a good three to four months revising the script, polishing it up.
00:37We sold it to Sony Pictures many, many years ago, Columbia Pictures at Sony,
00:43and they decided they didn't want to do it, so then we brought it over to Millennium and Avi Lerner's
00:49company,
00:50and that's what started it going.
00:51That was one of the advantages with working with Millennium,
00:55because once the decision had been made that this was the project they wanted,
01:00they got behind it 100%, and we really didn't stop.
01:06Your agent's always, like, sending you scripts.
01:09Some of them appeal to you, you know, you get the logline, you read the coverage.
01:13Some you actively go out and get yourself.
01:16This one came to me through Irwin and Charles Winkler and through my agent.
01:22When I picked it up, I read it, and I went, wow, this is good.
01:24Like, who's in this movie?
01:25I knew at that point that it was something I wanted to do.
01:29I really liked the character, and I felt like she's strong,
01:33and I love strong female characters, but at the same time,
01:36she's kind of a woman in a suit, which I've never really played before,
01:40and I thought, oh, this could be interesting to just do something different.
01:44It's still in the vein of an action film.
01:46I've known Mila over the years and always been impressed by her.
01:50I give her so much credit because it's so hard for a woman
01:53to be an international star, and, you know, Mila is.
01:57She's an international action star, and it's pretty impressive
02:00when you think about how many women are in cinema today,
02:06and there's not that many.
02:09She cottons onto something that doesn't seem right to her,
02:14and she has a very hard time convincing her superiors at the embassy
02:19that something is wrong.
02:21You start seeing the tension immediately
02:23in what turns out to be a really great political thriller.
02:27Kate Abbott has been brought in because she's excellent at what she does,
02:31but also just has great, great instincts in terms of what she does,
02:36in terms of people and assessing people.
02:39She's just one of those individuals who has a high degree of discernment, I think,
02:44and I think she's been rewarded.
02:46She's top of her class, and also, you know, she's been brought in
02:49because she's just very, very good, and it's important in an assignment.
02:52Several individuals from disparate places who do not have American access
02:59in order to complete a plot on New Year's Eve.
03:03They want Times Square, when the ball drops, to be a horrendous event.
03:09Mila Jovovich will save the day,
03:11and I can promise you she is a strong, tough girl.
03:17We were very, very fortunate to get Mila Jovovich
03:20because she is a number one female action star.
03:25There's no question about that.
03:27And she brought that intensity to the role,
03:32and I must say I admire her so much
03:36because we were filming in London in January.
03:40Getting from the hotel to the location in London in this weather, it's tough.
03:44That's the biggest challenge we've had.
03:47No, actually, things have been going quite well.
03:49We've been fighting the weather every day.
03:51A lot of the scenes that we thought we would shoot in good weather
03:54turn out to be damp and cold.
03:58But we're making movies, and that's what we do.
04:01James McTeague is doing a great job.
04:03I think he's very smart.
04:05I think he knows exactly how much to push and pull in this movie.
04:10And it kind of reminds me of Alan Pakula.
04:13There's an intelligence in this movie as an action movie.
04:16The mood of the film really reminds me of those great action movies of the 70s.
04:21To me, it was important to feel like all the characters were placed here.
04:25I didn't really want to try and do a lot of that CG or anything like that.
04:29And I think there's texture that you get off the streets that you don't get by faking it.
04:35I'm sure that every screenwriter has pretty much the same emotion.
04:41It's, you have to pinch yourself because you can't quite believe that it's happening.
04:46But there you are.
04:48You're actually watching something you wrote be translated into another medium.
04:53You're watching people give flesh and blood to the characters that you've created.
05:00And you realize, between the crew and everyone else who's there,
05:08the enormous amount of time and talent and energy that goes into making it.
05:15So, it was just an incredible experience.
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