John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, writers and directors of Mayday, sat down to explain the making of their upcoming buddy film set during the Cold War. The film, which stars Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh, follows American pilot Troy Kelly (Reynolds) who crashes behind enemy lines in Russia. He is nursed back to health by an unlikely ally: Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh), a KGB officer obsessed with America.
The directors said, “The intention in the film and in the trailer was to give you a bit of a rug pull in terms of the genre and tone. At first, it could almost be the setup to a horror movie. We always talked about this as being kind of a spiritual cousin to Misery.” The trailer certainly does this, quickly unveiling a lighter tone after the tense opening. The two of them began working on the film shortly after Top Gun: Maverick hit theaters, so the duo was set on making the air sequences as realistic as possible. David Ellison, CEO of Paramount-Skydance and producer on the film, used to be a pilot and weighed in heavily with his own experiences. “He knew the world we were playing in very well,” said Goldstein. “We would get notes on very specific things that studio heads don’t normally weigh in on. When you do these maneuvers, you have a pretend ground level so that the pilot doesn’t actually crash into the ground — and that’s usually set 5,000 feet above the real ground. David wanted to make sure we were always above the hard deck when we did these maneuvers.”
They also noted how Kenneth Branagh was eager to do as many of his own stunts as possible for the film. In the trailer, we see his character beating up a bunch of guys in a restaurant to save Kelly. They said, “He would get to the set early and practice these stunts and fight moves very elaborately. We would get videos of him walking through and mumbling the moves to himself like a crazy person. And then you would see it on the day he really devoted himself to it.”
Daley and Goldstein directed Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, proving they are no rookies when it comes to action comedies. Mayday lands on Apple TV+ on September 4. Watch the full trailer below.
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