Skylin3s holds the prestigious honour of closing this weekend’s digital FrightFest. The film forms the third installment in what is so far a trilogy of movies dealing with an alien invasion. It all began in 2010 with Skyline, which followed a small group of people as aliens invaded. The second film, Beyond Skyline, injected a whole heap of action into the science fiction already laid out and saw Frank Grillo’s police detective try to save a human-alien hybrid child with game-changing abilities. This third offering moves the action into outer space and follows the now grown-up hybrid girl, Rose (Lindsey Morgan), as she is tasked with a covert mission to venture into enemy territory.
The film is written and directed by Liam O’Donnell, who previously wrote both Skyline and Beyond Skyline, as well as directing Beyond Skyline. Essentially, O’Donnell has spent the best part of the last decade submerged within this ever expanding world, making him the perfect person to sit down and talk about the project with. When we caught up with him, he was holed up in a hotel self-isolating after recently arriving into the States from the UK having completed the final finishing touches to Skylin3s ahead of the premiere. With the film so fresh in his memory, we took the opportunity to find out a little bit more about it.
Skylin3s is closing this year’s digital FrightFest, how are you feeling?
I feel honoured and nervous, equal parts. I was very happy to be selected. When I was in London, I did get to go over to meet the guys and film an intro and Q&A with some of their fanfare. That was a fun experience, but I definitely would love to come back once we have proper FrightFest again, and see it with that audience. I’ve heard so much from other directors. I remember Joe Lynch saying how it was like the best audience in the world. I’m definitely feeling a little FOMO, but still grateful to be part of this virtual edition.
You finished the film last week, that obviously means you’ve been working on it during this pandemic. What has that been like?
I mean, it was really lucky timing wise. We locked the cut in February, in Soho. The plan was that I was going to fly back and forth all summer and work on it, but because we had locked it, I went back home and was, “okay this is now a remote finishing process”. So all of the visual effects, sound, and composing, was all done basically all online. Through Zoom, through cineSync, through Frame.io.
Every single day I was waking up to new shots, which was great, it preoccupied me. As tough as it could be, and as frustrating it could be that you don’t get to be face-to-face on these things, we’re just so lucky to be in this time where the technology is so good that we were able to finish it all. So yeah, from February up until…well we’re still tweaking three shots now…so 1200 visual effect shots all done remotely in a pandemic. It was hard work, but at the same time everybody I’ve talked to who was in it is like, “I was so glad to have this movie to do with time. Now there’s a little bit of a grieving process, cause it’s over and now what?!” Looks like things are not exactly clearing up anytime soon. Hopefully something else comes along that I can obsess on because that definitely helps.
The first Skyline film was released in 2010, then it was a few years before the sequel. What drew you back into the world?
It was just each time we’d make one, in post, either financiers or distributors would start asking about a sequel. The first one was such a glimpse into this thing, there was so much potential with the creatures, and with the world, that when they asked us in post, “what would you guys do for a sequel?” we sat down and had a treatment that wasn’t too far off from what Beyond Skyline ended up. Even before the movie came out and had the reaction it did, we definitely wanted to move into a more action orientated direction.
Then with Beyond Skyline, I didn’t really have an ending that was setting up a sequel at all originally. Then we tested the movie and people were like, “well it’s a sequel, what’s the next one?” I just felt grateful that I got to make a second one. I felt like the first movie’s ending was such a cliffhanger ending, I didn’t want to do that. So when they came back and said, “we need more, we need more”, I had to think. A lot of the questions were people asking about Rose, they were really curious. How is this girl going to go on? Is she going to die in the next couple of days? She was growing so fast, what’s happening? So that actually was the origin of the Lindsey Morgan wraparound. We have to answer these questions and let’s imagine what another story would be, but also put a wraparound into this thing in case this is the last one. That’s why I was so proud of Beyond, if it was going to be the last one, I was happy.
But shooting that last day, that experience sort of inspired this whole other thing. I just thought, “this woman can do it all. She’s coming in here, I’m working with her one day and she’s got all these little quiet moments that are amazing. She can command the room, and crack wise with an eight-foot tall alien guy in a suit and I’m believing all of it! I have to make a movie about this. I think their dynamic is so cool.” Shortly after that, in the next three months I had the treatment for Skylin3s.
Rose is that ‘through character’, she’s obviously only in the first very briefly, but is still the link between the three. Where is she when we meet her at the start of Skylin3s?
We definitely pick up right where Beyond Skyline left off. We have our sort of Lord of the Rings recap told by James Cosmo. My favourite part is when he says, “after there, it gets complicated”, because it is complicated. Each movie we’re building things as we go. So we pick up right where we left off, into this big space battle, which again is a pinch me thing that I got to actually make a proper space battle in this one. At the end of the battle, Rose kind of freezes up when she has her final shot, and unfortunately one of her other ships gets caught in the crossfire and she now has to kill a bunch of her own men in order to take the aliens down and save Earth.
So we take this moment at the end of Beyond and we add a traumatic moment and backstory for Rose that she has to deal with and overcome throughout Skylin3s. For me, I wanted to set up the fact that we could do space travel, and that there were so many of these things that are capable within the story, but also take everything that she had reached in this moment and build her back up to it. We then start the story properly and it’s fifteen years after the invasion. We’re in post Apocalyptic London and we’re learning about this uneasy peace that’s been reached between the human survivors and the alien hybrids from the end of Beyond.
What was it about Lindsey Morgan that made you feel that she had what it takes, because she carries the film, there’s not much of the film that she’s not a part of.
That was part of the scheduling nightmare of the movie, that she’s in almost every scene. I guess it was just from Beyond it was like I need to find what this girl Rose would be like grown up. I wanted the girl to, even though she’s not Frank Grillo’s biological daughter, I wanted her to be a kind of spiritual daughter. Have a little bit of that essence.
I had seen the first season of The 100, there’s just certain actors that you spark to. You just like them, there’s a certain sense of authenticity and capability. I felt she always had that. She’s a mechanic on that show, and I just always believed that she could do what she was doing on screen. So when I came up with her for the idea, luckily enough she came on board and we shot that day. I was definitely inspired, and like I said, I thought we could build it around her. Then when we got to the script stage.. each movie does take on the personality of its lead, and I was just thinking about what I wanted to see her do in this story and everything just organically flowed from that. I then built it around what I thought she’s really, really good at, which is working her ass off. Just like Rose is always working and trying really hard. I think she’s got a great sense of humour and is a very smart character. She’s very capable, but she’s always being pushed into a corner and having to push back as much as she can. That’s what I really love watching Lindsey do. I like watching her strain and push and scream (laughs) and have to dig deep. I think that’s what her fans like too so I really hope they enjoy this movie because it seems like it’s perfect for what she’s great at.
There’s a lot of action and you also have my favourite ‘that guy’ of action cinema, Daniel Bernhardt, what’s he like to work with?
I was obviously a big fan of his from John Wick and The Matrix sequels, but he goes all the way back to the Bloodsport’s sequels. He was a lot of fun. You just turn around and look at him and it’s like an avatar from a video-game come to life. He’s 6′ 3, a very tall guy, he’s big, very handsome, but he’s also a sweetheart. As soon as he walked out, no matter what his wardrobe was, he’s just perfect for the world, and perfect for that character.
He’s kind of our martial arts workhorse in this movie. He had so many fights, but he had a long history with our stunt team, Reel Deal Stunts, out in Berlin. They’d worked together on a whole bunch of movies like Hobbs and Shaw, so they had a good shorthand. We didn’t have a ton of prep time on this movie. The big difference in the stunts and the action is just the prep and the money that you have to bring the actors to rehearsals. It’s very fortunate to hire actors that are physically quite gifted and can pick this stuff up really quickly. With Daniel you’re basically getting a fight choreographer, an action filmmaker and a great martial arts actor all in one. He was definitely that secret sauce.
It’s set in space, it’s an action film, were there any films you looked to for inspiration? I noticed a fair few nods to Aliens.
Aliens is quite obvious, and that was sort of the North Star for the movie for me. Also just from a budget standpoint. How to maximise efficiency because I still think it’s one of the most amazing for the budget movies ever made. I think the other ones that were obvious touchstones for me… I love the Riddick series. I love Pitch Black. That was a similar budget level to us and was definitely another one I was inspired by. I love Starship Troopers, but also from a tonal standpoint and some of the action set pieces, there’s a lot of Fellowship of the Ring in there. That wasn’t necessarily on purpose, it’s just my son’s favourite movie and the one we’ve watched the most. It was one of the things when it was coming together and thinking about it I thought, “oh, there’s definitely a lot of Fellowship of the Ring in here“. It’s in how we approach Cobalt and some of those set pieces. Some are deliberate and an inspiration and it’s a nod, and I might even make a little wink to it, but then other things just seep in through your DNA and surprise yourself sometimes.
You wrote the first film, wrote and directed two and three, do you think you have any more stories left in this world? If not films, there seems to be some scoop for a TV series?
There’s been talk about doing a TV thing, and that’s definitely interesting to me. I love doing the movies as we’ve been doing them too though. I definitely feel like towards the end, right here, where I say I’m grieving the process of no longer working on it, I have been in the background fleshing out a treatment of what maybe a part four would be, without jinxing it.
I think, just because of the flexibility and the freedom that I’ve been given on these, that there’s no reason I’d stop making them. Each one of them I’m allowed to completely change everything and make a completely different genre. Although I do feel by the end of Skylin3s that we’ve nailed down a couple of things that would be within the basis of what the next one would be. I feel like we’re just figuring out what these movies really really want to be and there’s a nice tone that we’ve reached towards the end of this movie that would be a great jumping off point.
The world premiere of Skylin3s will close FrightFest Halloween Digital Edition 2020 on 25th October, tickets are available here.
