Golden Boy

by Geri Thomas, Total Film, July 2006

Can't wait for 007 to return? You don't have to; there's a new Brit spy on the block and we're not talking Daniel Craig. An expert in martial arts, a crack shot, an experienced scuba diver and a master of languages, Alex Rider is everything an unshaken, unstirred secret agent should be. Except for one thing: He's only 14. Anyone expecting Spy Kids IV should get their coats now. ... Adapted from Anthony Horowitz's best-selling novel, Stormbreaker aims to squeeze its $40 million budget until it bleeds to create a movie that'll hook adults and kids alike. The baby Bond himself, Alex Pettyfer, is a relative newcomer, but the grown-up cast is a fearsome collection of talent. Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Mickey Rourke, Alicia Silverstone, Stephen Fry, Sophie Okonedo, Andy Serkis, Robbie Coltrane and Damian Lewis are the assassins, spymasters, gadgetmen and evil geniuses in a world of quad-bike escapes, martial-arts scrapes, horse chases, gunfights and showdowns atop steely skyscrapers.

James Bond's got a lot to live up to. ...

The New 007 ...
Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer)

"How many kids get to hang from the ceiling of the Science Museum firing a machine gun?" grins Alex Pettyfer. "Or ride a quad bike in a sequence where they have 12 Jeeps chasing, plus people on motorbikes behind them ... with a massive helicopter skimming just overhead?"

How many indeed. Despite only having one film behind him -- Tom Brown's Schooldays -- Pettyfer beat 500 other wannabe mini-Bonds to the role of Alex Rider. "We saw kids who looked the part, kids who could act and kids who would handle the action stuff," says director Geoffrey Sax. "Alex was one of the very few who could do all three." Original writer and screenwriter of the adaptation Anthony Horowitz chips in: "I have always been aware that the film stands or falls by the casting of Alex Rider. I feel enormous relief that we found him. He's almost exactly my vision of Alex -- it's so close, it's scary."

After a few weeks of physical training, Pettyfer joined the rest of the crew for a six-week shoot on the Isle of Man. It was here that he got to do quad-bike stunts, as well as spend a few gruelling days shooting the sequences where Alex trains with the SAS before going off on his mission. ("Going down a death-zip wire, hanging 120 foot above water is quite thrilling," he deadpans.) Then it was back to the UK mainland for location shooting, including a horseback chase in which the Household Cavalry stampedes through Piccadilly.

The location Pettyfer remembers best, though, is a junkyard in north London. There, Hong Kong martial arts supremo Donnie Yen was brought in to choreograph a kung-fu tussle between Alex Rider and a squad of bad guys. Yen new that Pettyfer would have to be doubled in some of the more difficult bits -- "Luckily, Hong Kong stuntmen are about the same height and build as a 14-year-old," Yen laughingly told Total Film -- but he was surprised at how quickly Pettyfer learned the "rope dart" techniques Alex uses to tangle up his opponents. "He picked it up as we were filming," Yen recalls. "I shot the scene in two days and after spending the first day learning them, he'd mastered them by the second."

Pettyfer was glad to leave some scenes to the professionals, though. "One of Donnie's team had to jump from one car to the other car," he remembers with a grimace," and as he did it he put his foot through the back windscreen and cut his leg up. But he was back the next day going for it again."

The New Jaws ...
Mr. Grin (Andy Serkis)

"After we cast him, Andy Serkis told me that I gave him his first screen-acting job," says Sax. "I cast him as a reporter in an episode of the Rik Mayall series The New Statesman."

Serkis was happy to play Darrius Sayle's lethal sidekick. "I'd just come back from King Kong," he remembers, "and it was a complete antidote from being on that project for a year. Mr. Grin was a fun character. He can't speak because he's had a knife-throwing accident." That failed attempt to catch a knife in his mouth not only left Grin speechless, it also gave him his trademark scar curving up from the edges of his mouth.

"It's difficult to make a character out of someone who can't speak, but Andy's a very physical actor and the way he moves his body speaks volumes," says Sax.

The New Blofeld ...
Darrius Sayle (Mickey Rourke)

Plotting to attack Britain by using poisoned computers to slaughter the country's children, the role of billionaire Sayle -- a larger-than-life sociopath -- could almost have been written for Mickey Rourke. Actually, it pretty much was.

"We changed the character as soon as he was cast," says Horowitz. In the book, Herod Sayle is a Middle-Eastern urchin made good. When Rourke came on board (after what Geoffrey Sax describes as an "interesting lunch at the Dorchester ... any time you sit down with a character as colorful as Mickey it's going to be interesting"), however, the part was tweaked to accommodate him.

"I changed the name to Darrius and turned him into California trailer trash whose mother had won the lottery," says Horowitz with a grin. "You've now got a film where all the good guys are English and the bad guys are American. It makes a change."

Sayle's a Bond villain writ large, with the requisite henchmen and killers on the payroll and secret laboratories, abandoned mines and luxurious homes coming out of his cauliflower ears. Just look at his back room: a multi-level set boasting statues, a full-size snooker table and a gigantic glass tank filled with 17,000 gallons of water. Oh, and a lethal giant jellyfish. Which has got to come in handy.

That said, Rourke's not gone for the "moustache-twirling villain approach. "He stepped back," explains Sax. "He didn't want to be obvious, he wanted to be subtle, to be cool, calm and collected, playing it with an underlying sense of danger. That's how a lot of genuine moguls really are -- I've met some of them and they're so charming, but you know that they'd throw you into their giant jellyfish tank at a moment's notice!"

The New M And Miss Moneypenny ...
Alan Blunt (Bill Nighy) And Mrs Jones (Sophie Okonedo)

"I suppose we are the film's M and Miss Moneypenny," chuckles Sophie Okonedo, seemingly pleased by Total Film's analogy. "Though we're just a much, much camper version!"

With Jones as his right-hand woman, Blunt's the grim MI6 chief who used to emply Alex's uncle, Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) in a stuntastic cameo), until he was killed in the line of duty investigating a certain Darrius Sayle. Blunt then blackmails Alex into going undercover, his agency needing a kid to impersonate a teen magazine competition winner visiting Sayle's business. Described in Horowitz's book as a man so grey and lifeless he almost belongs in a cemetery ("I actually based him on former BBC boss John Birt," admits one-time Beeb employee Horowitz), Blunt is not a nice man.

"He's a very satisfying character to play," says Nighy with an arched eyebrow. "He's kind of spooky but comic: the grey man in the grey suit with the grey hair and the grey glasses. He also appears to have no feelings whatsoever. Mrs. Jones is the one who does the feeling -- he just does the strategy, although when Alex does really, really well, the ice around his heart melts. Blunt's quite ruthless but he's also, hopefully, slightly comic. If not, I'll have to leave the country!" Nighy ponders, his eyebrow now settled, "I think of myself as the 'good cop,' but Sophie obviously thinks of herself as the 'good cop' too!"

"I am the good cop!" Okonedo protests. "Jones starts off very tough, but shse does have a soft spot for Alex. Though in a much more maternal way than Bond's Miss Moneypenny!"

The New Bond Girls ...
Jack Starbright (Alicia Silverstone) And Nadia Vole (Missi Pyle)

"Oh yeah: I'm a Rider Girl," laughs Alicia Silverstone. "Stormbreaker was a great job."

One of the first people to be cast, Silverstone plays Ian Rider's American housekeeper Jack Starbright, a spirited nanny who takes charge of Alex when his uncle-and-guardian bites the big one at the hands of Sayle's thugs.

"She's not very good at doing her job but she cares so passionately about it," says Silverstone. "She's a little bit cuckoo, frankly, but she's spunky -- very spunky."

And Jack's erm, "spunkiness" comes in handy when she has to face off against one of the cast's other high-profile women, Dodgeball's Missi Pyle, who plays Sayle's "deliciously wicked" (in Horowitz's words) PR woman/henchbitch, Nadia Vole.

Silverstone emits what can only be described as a squeal. "There's lots of furniture involved in that fight! Missi and I were both really keen to go for it, but we decided that it would be much more fun if my character wasn't actually very good at fighting. It's really funny! All the things my character does are totally civilian reactions, they're not fighter reactions. When she attacks, she attacks with a blender! Or an orange!"

Pyle and Silverstone became firm pals on the Isle of Man set. Which is just as well because, if push comes to shove, Silverstone isn't so sure that she could best her new buddy in a real fight. "Are you kidding? I think she'd have me in a second. She's really tall! She's like seven feet tall compared to me! I'm 5' 4 1/2"! I'm feisty, but if Missi and me met in a dark alleyway? She'd beat me."

The New Q ...
Smithers (Stephen Fry)

I have 13 godchildren, of whom at least half are absolutely passionate about the Alex Rider books," admits Stephen Fry. But while he likes kids, his character, Smithers, can't stand them. Which makes his mission more than a little annoying. "For this assignment, he has a back room in Hamleys toy shop where he manufactures and lashes together all his clever gadgets."

"We went into Hamleys at 6:30 am on a Sunday," remembers Sax. "They gave us a special area of floor and we tried to get everything done before the store got too crowded. But it was getting pretty busy by the time we finished. We shot the rest of Stephen's scenes -- in what we say is Hamleys' basement -- on a soundstage on the Isle of Man."

When Horowitz first dreamt up the Alex Rider books, he didn't plan on the character having any gadgets. And then he talked to some sprogs. "Every kid I spoke to said, 'Where are the gadgets" What are the gadgets in this book going to be?' So I went back and put them in."

For Stormbreaker, Smithers provides Rider with a souped-up Nintendo DI, "with cartridges that let it function as a smoke bomb, a bug detector and a listening device," says Sax. "Then there's a fountain pen filled with sodium pentothal, a backpack that turns into a parachute, zit cream that can eat through metal. ... They're not high-tech gadgets, just good simple ideas."

The New Ian Fleming ...
Anthony Horowitz

"We can't take Bond on," sighs the 51-year-old author. "We can't fight it and win because, you know, they have bigger resources and mroe money." Oh no? What about rumours that Stormbreaker was initially set for a $100 million budget? "Yeah, we were offered 100 million dollars to do it with a big studio ... but they started saying things like 'Alex has to be 18' and 'He has to have a girlfriend' and 'Where's his car?' They might as well have said, 'Let's make Alex into an animated hedgehog." Horowitz calms himself with happy thoughts. "Mark Samuelson and the other producers have let us stay close to the heart and soul of what Alex is and what the film should be," he smiles. "Just as well, really. I know where Mark lives!"

He'd be a fool to do anything else. You don't look a cash cow in the mouth: There are six Rider novels and a seventh one on the way and Horowitz has already delivered the draft screenplay for the second movie. Looks like Alex Rider could be competing with James Bond for years to come.

"We're sort of dancing with 007 while trying not to step on his toes," says Horowitz. It's inevitable that people will see it as a Bond pastiche, homage, rip-off, whatever; but there's more to it than that." Pause. "That said, there's a great Goldfinger joke in Stormbreaker!"

Callout: "The film stands or falls by the casting of Alex Rider -- Pettyfer is so close it's scary." -- Anthony Horowitz

Working Title

The filmmakers talk Total Film through their Bond-beating pre-title sequence. ...

Total Film, July 2006

Escaping from Darrius Sayle's clutches, Alex's secret agent uncle Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) speeds off on a Yamaha motorcycle. Sayls's army of henchmen are in hot pursuit.

"We shot that over four days on the Isle of Man," says director Geoffrey Sax. "We had motorbikes, a sports car, helicopters and a speedboat firing a rocket launcher, trying to knock Ewan off his bike. Forty stuntmen worked on that. We shot stuff down mountain roads, then across a beach and across a harbour. Each bit was a separate day of shooting with two units shooting simultaneously."

Rider ends up in a sports car for the big finish though. "A gun-wielding stuntman [doubling for Damian Lewis as Russian assassin Yassen Gregorovich] is hanging upside down from a helicopter chasing a BMW at 80 mph," explains Anthony Horowitz. "Even Bond hasn't done that!"

For the close-ups, the stuntmen stepped out and McGregor and Lewis stepped in. "I hadn't seen Ewan for a long time," says Lewis. "We were at drama school at the same time but had never done a job together. And now he's sitting in a natty sports car and I'm suspended from a moving helicopter! Not the sort of thing we practised in drama school. ..."

Stormbreaker

Junior James Bond-style actioner primed to make waves this summer. ...

Total Film, July 2006

ETA: 21 July 2006

Director: Geoffrey Sax

Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke, Bill Nighy, Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Silverstone, Andy Serkis

"I'm excited," says 51-year-old Anthony Horowitz, beaming with boyish enthusiasm. It's hard to begrudge the author his effervescence. Packing adrenalised, Blighty-set action sequences and a fizzy cast, Stormbreaker's story of teen agent Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer) going head-to-head with Mickey Rourke's billionaire mega-villain looks like a scorching adap of his bestselling spy novel.

"Stormbreaker has been enormous fun," bubbles Horowitz. "It's going to be a hard act to follow." Ah, yes, the sequels. Producers are so confident, they've asked Horowitz to start work on the screenplay for book two in time for a Christmas 2006 shoot. But while he might be having fun, there's been no rest for young Pettyfer. With mountain climbing, scuba diving, martial arts and other extreme sports, his role is said to be one of the most demanding ever undertaken by a child actor. That Radcliffe kid has it easy. ...

Numbers

Boys who auditioned: 500

Previous roles played by Alex Pettyfer: 1

Movie budget: £21,000,000

Days worked by Jimmy Carr: 2

Sequels planned: 5

Stormbreaker

Total Film, July 2006

Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke, Bill Nighy

Director: Geoffrey Sax

Buzz: A junior 007 with a rucksack full of gadgets 0 would kill for.

ETA: 21 July

A $43 million adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's best-selling teen thriller, Stormbreaker is the story of Alex Ryder (newcomer Alex Pettyfer), a 14-year-old dragged into working for MI6 after his spy uncle (McGregor) is killed. The mission? To stop the mass-murder plans of billionaire Herod Sayle (Rourke). ...

The supporting cast's awesome, but it's Pettyfer who'll determine if it's a hit. With only a TV movie version of Tom Brown's Schooldays behind him he looks risky, but the producers are sure they've got the right kid. If so, we could be seeing a lot of Alex Ryder in years to come: Horowitz is up to book six. ...