Matthew Reilly’s Interceptor on Netflix: ‘My goal is to have one global phenomenon’
Ever since he self-published his first novel at the age of 19, Matthew Reilly has been proving people wrong. Now he faces his biggest test ... can he take over Hollywood with his new Netflix film, Interceptor?
If author Matthew Reilly and screenwriter Stuart Beattie had met as kids, they would have become best friends immediately. You can just imagine the pair re-enacting battle scenes from their favourite Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies, using treasured action figurines fished out of pockets or school bags; good guys and bad guys fighting, lots of gunfire, plenty of explosions and a hell of a lot of fun.
The thing is, that’s exactly what they are doing now as grown-ups. They’re just doing it on a much grander scale, with actors, sets, stunt coordinators and special effects in a Netflix production that will go into 220 million homes. They are living their childhood fantasies and they are getting paid for it.
“That is what it feels like working with Matt; it’s very natural,” Beattie tells WISH. “It’s like when I was a kid and I was playing in the sandbox with my mate, but we are just playing on a much bigger stage. You are creating stories in your head and they are creating stories in their head, and you are playing together. Then six hours goes by and your mum is calling you for dinner.”
The movie geeks – who met in LA seven years ago and became good friends – have teamed up to bring Reilly’s first feature film to life. Called Interceptor, it stars Spanish/adopted Australian actress Elsa Pataky, and comes out on Netflix on June 4.
Reilly is a hugely successful Australian author who has sold 7.5 million copies of his blockbuster thriller novels since he self-published his first book at the age of 19. But he has also always wanted to not only write but to direct his own blockbuster action movie.
“The hard part is if you want to direct a movie for the first time you need to do it on a small budget, because no one will give you a large amount of money,” he says, laughing. “So I wrote an action movie that is contained to one set, and that is how Interceptor was born. The bad guys fire 16 stolen Russian nukes at 16 American cities. And our heroine is on an interceptive missile facility in the middle of the ocean and she has to shoot them down while the bad guys are trying to kill her.”
Reilly, who has been based in LA with his partner Kate Freeman for the past seven years, wrote the screenplay for Interceptor in 2017 and sent it to his mate Beattie to get his feedback. A fellow Australian and movie buff, Beattie had been in the US since he left home at 19; he decided he wanted to make films, so took a big risk and got on a plane to LA to make his dream a reality.
“When I saw Star Wars I was just six-years-old and it blew my mind,” he explains. “I remember thinking I loved the structure of it, how it was done and that big ending. I just fell in love with movies. I was known as the movie guy in high school. So when people started asking me ‘what do you want to do with your life?’, I would say I want to make movies. And they would laugh and say, no, seriously, what do you really want to do? No one would believe me.”
So Beattie, who had written stories for as long as he could remember, decided screenwriting was the way to get into the movie industry and Hollywood was where he needed to be to do it. The then 19-year-old left his shocked family and went to LA in 1992, right after riots shook the city.
“My parents were horrified,” he says. “I have a 21-year-old and a 19-year-old now, and if they were to leave and go 7000 miles away I would not cope at all. But back then I was like, I am off, see you later, and I didn’t look back. My parents were worried about my physical safety, and hoping I would just stay alive and not get shot in LA at that time.”
Beattie not only avoided getting shot, but he went on to have an award-winning career in screenwriting, producing and directing. He wrote the screenplay for the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Expectations for the film were low, given it was inspired by a Disney theme park ride, but it smashed the box office and wowed the critics, making $US634.3 million and spawning four sequels. Beattie went on to write the Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx movie Collateral, which scored him multiple award nominations including a BAFTA for best screenplay. Foxx was nominated for an Oscar for his role as a taxi driver who unsuspectingly picks up a hitman, played by Cruise.
Beattie achieved his dream of becoming a director in 2010 when he wrote the screenplay and directed the movie based on John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the War Began. “Like Matt, I always wanted to be a filmmaker, a film director, so writing was my way to directing,” he says. “Matt’s was to write these incredible books and then convince someone to let him to do it on a small budget.”
Reilly also knew very early on he wanted to be involved in films. He too fell in love with them as a kid. He collects memorabilia and has a DeLorean like the one used as a time machine in the Back to The Future series, as well a golden idol from Raiders of The Lost Ark. When I interview him and Beattie over Zoom from Reilly’s LA office, this love for the movies is also evident in the background: on the wall hangs a Star Wars poster hangs next to one for Interceptor.
The 47-year-old author started by creating thriller movies in his head and turning them into novels. His first book, Contest, was rejected by every major publisher, so at 19, instead of walking away he got a bank loan and published it himself.
He convinced bookshops in Sydney to stock his debut novel and one day in 1997, Cate Paterson, a commissioning editor at Pan MacMillan, came across it. She was impressed, contacted Reilly through the details listed in the book and signed him up.
He went on to become a New York Times bestselling author and write more than 20 action-packed novels.
“My ultimate goal is to have one story that becomes a global phenomenon, like The Empire Strikes Back or Die Hard or Back to the Future, a movie people arse still watching 30 years from now,” Reilly says. “And a movie is something that can do that. They can find a worldwide audience.”
But making a movie is very different from writing a novel. There are budgets for a start, and that is why Reilly sent the Interceptor screenplay to Beattie as soon as he finished it five years ago. “I thought it was a great story,” he says of the piece. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years now and I have found it’s really hard to find a great story, and this just leapt of the page. Within the first couple of pages I was eating my popcorn and at the edge of my seat. I was hooked within two pages.”
The first thing Beattie did after finishing the book was ask Reilly whether he could have a go at rewriting it. To his credit, Reilly didn’t bat an eyelid; he was thrilled that Beattie liked it and wanted to improve it.
“It was like a masterclass in screenwriting having Stu rewrite my script,” says Reilly. He describes a novel as like running a marathon and a screenplay as a sprint: “A screenplay is Usain Bolt running 100m. There is no room for anything other than a really straight line, and that is what Stu did with Interceptor. I can write a 500-page book but it’s harder to write a 100-page screenplay.”
Once the script was sorted, next came the really hard part: convincing producers to get on board and fund the project. Adding the condition that Reilly direct – and he had never done it before – made it much more difficult. But for the established author, it was non-negotiable part of the deal. “It’s the director who tells the story; it’s their vision, which is what you see up on the screen,” he explains. “A good way to describe it is that if a movie is a painting, the producers get all the paints, they get the brushes, they get the canvas, but it is the director paints the painting. I delivered the finished version of Interceptor a week and a half ago and it is the story that I wanted to tell.”
But the author admits it wasn’t easy to get producers onboard, especially when he explained to them how he was qualified for the job even though he had no previous experience. “They said to me ‘what makes you think you can direct a feature film?’ and I said ‘I’ve listened to a lot of audio commentaries on videos and DVDs’,” Reilly says, laughing. “I really said that. They were pretty shocked.”
Beattie’s connections put Reilly in contact with Australian producers Michael Boughen and Matthew Street. It was also his reassurances that Reilly would listen to criticism and feedback during the movie-making process that got the project over the line with the author as director.
The next significant development was the script getting into the hands of Elsa Pataky’s manager, Mark Morrissey. He knew his client was looking for a female-led action movie after taking a decade off to raise her children.
“Elsa was looking to come back and make a big splash and prove there wasn’t just one superhero in the house,” says Reilly. “She wanted to do a role that showed women can be badasses too. They are just as tough and they can do anything men can do, and that really is the point of Interceptor.”
Once Pataky was on board, husband Chris Hemsworth joined as executive producer, as did Netflix. The movie was shot in Australia in 33 days. Reilly says the experience was exhilarating and everything he had hoped it would be – even if he can’t remember it all. “I have some memories of the shoot and other parts I have no memories of,” he laughs. “We were moving so fast and I was having so much coffee. I was up at 4:45am and I would get back to my apartment at about 7:30pm at night and I would be doing storyboards in the evening for the next day. It is this relentless drive that is non-stop.”
The movie is out on June 3 on Netflix. And Reilly seems quite calm about the prospect of his directorial/screenwriting debut being judged by potentially more than 220 million households in every corner of the globe.
“Writing novels has taught me so much about letting go of the finished product,” he says. “You have to make the best thing you can do so you can then let it go. Ten days ago I delivered the finished movie to Netflix, and I can’t make any changes and I can’t tinker with. Like the book, I have left everything out on the field and I am very satisfied.”
And what would their childhood selves think of the two mates realising their dreams as proper grown-ups and making a movie full of thrills, fighting and explosions. “My six-year-old self would be buying the action figure that goes with the movie and would be playing Interceptor,” Reilly says, giving his best, hilarious, impression of a six-year-old: “Look up! The bad guys are coming! Quick, fire the missile!” .
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