Here’s the thing: if you’re going to make a movie about a stunt guy, your movie should have a ton of stunts in it. And those stunts should be done properly – which is to say with a mountain of stunt performers, practical moves, and avoiding an impulse to rely on CGI. Step up, The Fall Guy – a big-screen overhaul of the beloved ‘80s TV series, with Ryan Gosling playing stuntman Colt Seavers, who has to turn proper action-hero when a movie star is kidnapped. And given that the film’s director David Leitch famously started out as a stunt double himself – joining Fight Club as Brad Pitt’s other guy, and kicking ass in The Matrix sequels alongside Chad Stahelski – the stakes were high to go all-out on good old-fashioned movie stunts.
Mission accomplished, according to producer Kelly McCormick. “It was a really special set,” she tells Empire in the 2024 Preview issue. “We were doing these huge stunts, like a huge 150-foot fall, which hadn’t happened in about ten years. We did a 250-foot jump over a giant crevasse – I’m not even sure how we achieved that, to be honest! We did a giant cannon roll [flipping a car multiple times] on a beach – that hadn’t been done since, I think, Casino Royale.” Overall, it demanded a stunt department comprising over 120 people. “Stunt performers often don’t get to do big stunts anymore, because CG is so good,” she says. “But they went in with dreams and goals and aspirations, and we were able to give them opportunities they hadn’t had in a long time, if at all. It was dream fulfilment. And I think you can see the difference.”
For Leitch, the fun was both in pulling off those huge stunts, and revealing a little of how they’re done to the viewers too. “There are two levels of stunts in this film,” he explains. “You have the movie set that Colt is working on, where we could use our biggest imagination to create stunts that he has to do. Then there are the stunts that are part of the engine of the [story] where he’s unravelling the mystery of the missing actor. What was really fun about the on-set stuff was we could give the audience a look at how it’s done.” Just, don’t try it at home.
Read Empire’s full feature on The Fall Guy in the 2024 Preview issue – also featuring brand new looks at Nosferatu, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley, Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes and many more – on sale Thursday 23 November. Pre-order a copy online here. The Fall Guy comes to UK cinemas from 3 May 2024.