Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese of ComingSoon spoke with Scott Adkins, who plays Holiday in Accident Man: Hitman, about improving the action sequences in the follow-up, which will be available digitally and on-demand on October 14.
According to the plot, “The Accident Man is back and this time he must defeat the world’s best assassins to defend the unappreciative son of a mafia leader, save the life of his sole buddy, and rebuild his relationship with his crazy father figure.”
Accident Man Tyler Treese Simply put, Hitman’s Holiday is a blast. What were the difficulties you had when writing a sequel and expanding on the strong foundation you established with the first Accident Man?
Obviously, we wanted to deliver the same kind of film again, but with more action, more comedy, and more vibrant, wacky characters. That was the objective, according to Scott Adkins, who added that we wanted to use what we learned from the first one.
I believe I’m pleased with how the first one came out. You know, making these indie films is difficult. Time and money are not a luxury you can afford. You must occasionally make compromises. Although I was delighted with how well it was received, I knew I wanted to make this one funnier, and I believe we succeeded in doing so. To be honest, I also believe the action has improved.
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The humor is definitely funny. I am aware that you put effort into developing the plots for these two films. Can you talk about simply improving the humor and giving the writing a little bit of that British cheek?
The author of this narrative is Stu Small, and we both contributed to its creation. However, he’s a very witty and funny guy. We’ve known each other since we were little, and he certainly has the kind of schoolyard humor that fits this. And when we jointly developed the plot’s structure, Stu went off to write the script with his fantastic dialogue.
When the Kirbys later got involved, they greatly improved the scripts’ structural elements. We made it a little later than we had hoped, but we’re content with what we had. Unfortunately, it took far too long to release the sequel. Although the epidemic didn’t help, I’m nonetheless glad that folks can now watch the sequel.
What can you tell me about the Kirby Brothers? They were doing these really cool YouTube videos and using VR in some creative ways, so I know they had that YouTube channel for a very long time. What method did you use to contact them? They appeared to be the ideal fit.
They were unquestionably the ideal fit, and I was fortunate to find them. On Doctor Strange, George Kirby and I actually met. He served as a stuntman for Benedict Cumberbatch. I am familiar with him from back then, and I have seen their YouTube videos, but they sent me the short they produced.
There’s another film that they’re going to get off the ground and they did a short sort of concept, 10-minute thing of how they spill that, and they gave it to me and it was fantastic. Visually stylish, the action was top-notch, and they’d not done a film yet.
So I was like, “Guys, you want to direct accident Man 2?” And luckily for me, they said yes because, first of all, they understand the action completely coming from the stunt world. Second of all, they’re all about comedy and lighthearted sort of entertainment. That’s what they do.
They understand visual effects, which, in this day and age, that really helps. And they’re English and understand the sort of world of accident Man, and the Englishness of the whole situation. So perfect. Couldn’t have gotten a better choice.
You spoke about the action even being better in the sequel, what was the most difficult stunt to work on during this film? Because the action looks great throughout.
Oh, most difficult stunt. Well, they threw me out of the van at that one point just because it was the last day of shooting, and the schedule changed actually. And it’s like, “Oh, well I’m not doing anything, I’m just going to go home tomorrow, so you might as well throw me out of the van.”
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So that was fun. Then the fights, I mean they’re all hard. I hurt my knee in the first week, which sucks because then I’m in pain for the rest of the shoot, and it’s harder to do some of the movements, but that happens sometimes, just got to get on with it. The show must go on.
One thing that’s really nice about the sequel is you’ve got a good mix of faces, old and new, there are some great returning characters. How important was it to kind of have that connective tissue and continue building off that story that we had in the first film?
Well, yeah, I killed most of the characters in the first one, but luckily for me, I didn’t kill Perry Benson and I didn’t kill Ray Stevenson and they are fantastic actors. Ray, of course, has done some amazing things, and he really brings out the gravitas that that character needs.
I mean, when we originally wrote Big Ray, we said to ourselves, We’re going to write this so good because we, we want to attract a great actor. And we did in Ray Stevenson, so of course, we had to bring him back. And Perry Benson was like, that’s one of those characters that, 0when we did the first one, you didn’t necessarily know that he was going to be as popular as he turned out, and he kind of steals the show in most of the scenes he’s in. And so we’re able to bring him into this one in a much bigger way.
And the relationship between my character and his character, the bromance that’s going on, I think it’s really entertaining and that’s what we wanted this film to be about, was friendship. That was sort of the theme for the movie.
This has been such a great year for you. Day Shift just came out, and the director of that, J. J. Perry, also has a stunt background. The vampire fights in that movie just looked so awesome. How was it filming that and doing those different types of stunts?
J. J., man, he’s coming from stunts, obviously, he’s done a lot of second-unit directing. That was hard, that day. We shot me and Steve Howey’s stuff for one day, for the whole day. We got all the action done and there was not even a lunch break and I was like, “We’re in America. Is this even allowed?
We’re doing French hours!!” And it was bang, bang, bang, bang onto the next, onto the next. I was actually really tired, because I’d had a bit of time off and… yeah, J.J. just, he pushes you. You have to push to get good action, you have to push the crew, you have to push the stunts, you have to push the actors, have to push everyone, because it’s about getting all the different shots.
The more stuff you’ve got, the better it’s going to look, and he understood that, and I was just really thankful. I’ve worked with him in the past before and I was really thankful that he entrusted me with that role in his directorial debut.
You’ve got John Wick: Chapter 4 coming up. What was your biggest takeaway from just working with another superstar in action movies like Keanu Reeves?
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Keanu’s great. Everyone says it, he’s the nicest guy and he truly is. He’s just such a down-to-earth nice guy that’s interested in everybody’s life and genuinely, he’s a sweetheart. But listen, man, when he gets into john Wickmode and he starts doing his thing, it’s intense. Keanu Reeves is one of the greatest action stars on the planet, without question. He’s one of the top five, in my opinion.
He’s up there with Jackie Chan, he’s up there with all of them because, time and time again, he puts his heart and his soul into these action films. Think about how many action films he’s done now, he’s on the fourthJohn Wick, fourth matrix, Point Break, Speed, amazing action films, all of them.
And even going into his mid-fifties, he’s still grinding them out. You got to respect that he’s given his body and his limbs to the action genre, and he deserves his respect, and it is an absolute pleasure to work with him.
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