How stunt performers emerged as the next generation of action directors
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still / Alamy)
A stunt performer taking a trip to the other side of the camera and trying their hand at filmmaking is hardly a new phenomenon, but it’s only in the last few years that there’s been such an influx in action designers and choreographers making their directorial debuts it’s become an increasingly viable option for any veteran who fancies their chances of embarking on a secondary career.
Hal Needham was a trailblazer in that regard, with Burt Reynolds’ regular double making his feature-length debut on Smokey on the Bandit, which he followed up with Hooper. That movie was an ode to the hard work, dedication, and utmost professionalism of stunt performers everywhere, basically David Leitch’s The Fall Guy almost half a century early.
Speaking of Leitch, he and Chad Stahelski spearheaded the current crop of stuntmen-turned-directors when they shared duties on John Wick. Only the latter was credited, but the former had done mighty well for himself by moving onto the bone-jarring Atomic Blonde, box office bonanza Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, and the star-studded Bullet Train.
Through the 87Eleven action design company and 87North production banner they co-founded, they’ve become major players in the genre, with the outfit having been involved in not only the films they’ve directed, but also Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Kate, and David Harbour’s Violent Night.
The company was also responsible for Jamie Foxx’s vampire-hunting action comedy Day Shift, which was helmed by another stuntman-turned-director in J.J. Perry, who followed up his debut with the Dave Bautista-led assassin caper The Killer’s Game. 87North is additionally behind With Love, which stars Academy Award winner and martial arts expert Ke Huy Quan in the feature-length debut of fellow stunt veteran Jonathan Eusebio.
Ric Roman Waugh and his younger brother Scott started out as stunt performers before making their respective film bows on 2001’s Out of the Shadows and 2012’s Act of Valor, respectively, before going on to take the reins on Gerard Butler’s Angel Has Fallen, Greenland, and Kandahar, and Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables 4 among others, so it’s not as if the craze came out of nowhere.
It’s only becoming more and more pronounced, though, with both of Netflix’s Extraction films ranked among the streaming service’s most-watched original movies ever, which are the only directorial credits Sam Hargrave has amassed to date. There’s clearly something in the water, but beyond the obvious of stunt performers excelling in the action arena because it’s something they’re eminently familiar with, there’s a logical and natural progression.
It’s not a case of people getting blown up and tossed out of a building for decades and then deciding there’s a change of scenery required, with virtually all of the aforementioned names working second unit on some major productions before being upgraded to megaphone-wielder. For Leitch and Stahelski, they cut their teeth on The Wolverine, Jurassic World, Captain America: Civil War, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and working with a large crew on a massive-scale shoot gave them the ability to complement their pre-existing stunt knowledge with the experience of a bustling set.
“The stuntmen that we brought up at our company all learned how to choreograph, shoot, and edit,” Leitch explained to Entertainment Weekly of how he’s played a huge part in the current boom. “With any fight scene in a movie in the last 15 years, there’s probably someone who has gone through the doors of 87Eleven.”
Hargrave said that instead of simply allowing their crew “to be the best stuntmen they could be,” Leitch and Stahelski were intentionally “building an empire of filmmakers” who could do what they did. It’s a straightforward case of spreading the love in the broadest sense, but in the grand scheme of things, the pathway from stunts to directing is more unobstructed than it’s ever been, and genre junkies are going to be the ones who benefit most in the long run.