With films like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Predator, The Matrix and many, many more to his name, if anyone can produce an action film that takes place in the confines of an airplane, it’s Joel Silver.  His latest producorial endeavor is Jaume Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop.  It features Liam Neeson as Bill Marks, an air marshal who receives anonymous text messages during a transatlantic flight, demanding that he either fork over $150 million or lose a passenger every 20 minutes.

With Non-Stop due for a February 28th release, Collider got the chance to talk to Silver about the challenges of the production.  Even after losing a truck full of cameras to Hurricane Sandy, they still managed to pull everything together, building an entire airplane outfitted with ceilings perfect for Neeson’s height and tracks that adhered to Collet-Serra’s shot selection, and selecting roughly 200 extras to portray the other passengers for the entirety of the shoot.  Check out the details of what Silver had to say about all of that, the rights payment he believes he’s owed for the use of the airline Oceanic in Lost, his horror thriller Home Invasion, the status of his Escape from New York remake and more after the jump.

Joel Silver Time Index:

  • 00:00 – Step one after getting a script – call Neeson.
  • 01:25 – How Hurricane Sandy impacted the project.
  • 02:10 – How to continue pitching this type of character to Neeson.
  • 03:23 – What Neeson added to the character to make him his own.
  • 04:09 – Working with Collet-Serra.
  • 05:07 – Building their own plane.
  • 06:06 – On the name Oceanic originating in Executive Decision, not Lost.
  • 07:00 – The bits and pieces of their plane set.
  • 08:15 – The challenge of casting a plane full of extras for the entire shoot.
  • 09:14 – On scheduling a shoot that required everyone to be there all the time.
  • 10:48 – On making a noticeable contribution to every film he produces.
  • 11:47 – How many projects he’s actively working on right now.
  • 12:39 – An update on Home Invasion.
  • 13:35 – An update on the Escape from New York trilogy.


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