In the latest video from Summit’s Hunter Killer, cast members Gerard Butler (Olympus Has Fallen) and Oscar winner Gary Oldman (Best Actor for Darkest Hour) discuss working on the submarine thriller. The U.S. Navy assisted the cast and director Donovan Marsh in realistically bringing to the screen a story set on board a submarine. The Navy sent a subject matter expert to work with the cast on their lines and to learn how the Navy operates.
The film’s based on the book Firing Point by retired naval officer George Wallace and author Don Keith, with Arne L. Schmidt adapting it for the screen.
“It’s absolute necessity to have someone here who has actually been on submarines and knows the protocol,” said Gary Oldman about the Navy’s involvement in the project.
“The Navy was tremendously generous in giving us a real nuclear submarine,” explained director Donovan Marsh. “We shot on the submarine with a real crew. And then we needed to take a submarine out to sea so I could film it out in the water.”
According to Captain Russell Coons, the Pentagon’s War Room Advisor, Hunter Killer marks the first time a Virginia-class submarine appears in a feature film.
Discussing his preparation for the film, Gerard Butler said, “I also went out on a submarine underway. As the captain of a nuclear sub, I was taken through every part of the sub which is a city unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. It blows my mind.”
Butler also described the amount of detail put into the design of the submarine. “We had a team go to Pearl Harbor and they did a blueprint exactly of those subs, and then they were recreated.” He added, “You have the navigation charts, you have the periscope screens, you have all the sonar screens and you’re literally, ‘I’m on a sub. I’m in a control room on a sub.'”
The cast of the action thriller also includes Oscar winner Common (Best Original Song, Selma), Linda Cardellini (Avengers: Age of Ultron), and Toby Stephens (Die Another Day).
Hunter Killer is set to open in theaters on October 26, 2018.
Hunter Killer Plot:
Deep under the Arctic Ocean, American submarine Captain Joe Glass (Butler) is on the hunt for a U.S. sub in distress when he discovers a secret Russian coup is in the offing, threatening to dismantle the world order. Captain Glass must now assemble an elite group of Navy SEALs to rescue the kidnapped Russian president and sneak through enemy waters to stop WWIII.
