STORMBREAKER – SET VISIT – JULY 2005

As promised, here’s a report of my recent visit to the Isle of Man where Stormbreaker is now in its third week of production (nine more to go!) In case you’re wondering why the Isle of Man, it’s all to do with tax. Shooting there works out cheaper which means the production can afford more bullets, explosions, bad guys etc. You’d be amazed how many movies are shot on the IoM – but it works very well for Stormbreaker. The countryside looks exactly like Cornwall which, as you probably know, is where the book is set.

So what did I see? Well, when I arrived, they were shooting the scene where Smithers gives Alex his gadgets. Alex Pettyfer looked exactly how I imagined Alex Rider and was giving a great performance opposite Stephen Fry who was having a lot of fun (and doing quite a bit of re-writing) with Smithers. The two of them already knew each other from Tom Brown’s Schooldays on ITV. Alex had been Tom and Stephen had played the headmaster.

The scene was shot in a back room of a truly hideous hospital but it had been decked out with weird props including a stuffed parrot, a giant cocktail glass and about a thousand toys. This is just one of the many changes I’ve made to the book. In the film, Alex visits Smithers at Hamley’s the famous toyshop in London. They’ll be filming the outside of the toyshop and part of the ground floor later this year. The magic of the movies!

The afternoon was mayhem. We moved to a local school on the Isle of Man where about 150 kids were dressed up in different uniforms and taking part in three scenes that (in the film) will seem to be three different schools. The scenes come right at the end of the film when the Stormbreakers are about to release their deadly secret. I got to meet Sarah Bolger who plays Sabina Pleasure. Yes. That’s another change. Alex does have a girlfriend (sort of) from the start. But don’t worry! We’re making an action film, not a romance…

And if you have any doubts, you should have been there the next day when I saw a stuntman hanging upside-down from a helicopter, chasing a car along a winding road at about 50mph. He was being chased by a second helicopter with an amazing, spherical camera on its nose and by two camera trucks. This was a really, really dangerous stunt and it opens the film so it has to be spectacular. It was. The stuntman (playing Yassen Gregorovich) was Lee Sherwood who is one of the best in the business…check his credits on the internet. It was freezing and windy and he must have had nerves of steel to be whipped along…sometimes only inches from the car. And if the pilot had made a mistake and Lee had so much as touched the car, apparently he’d have been electrocuted!

All in a day’s work…!

Full report here