When writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein shot Mayday, the world had just witnessed Top Gun: Maverick, the ultimate aviation film, one that put its actors in real jets and earned $1.3 billion globally.
While Mayday did not have the benefit of working directly with the U.S. Navy like Maverick did, it did have producer and Paramount-Skydance boss David Ellison as among its roster. Ellison, a pilot himself, was obsessive about the flying details, Daley and Goldstein tell The Hollywood Reporter in a conversation breaking down the trailer for the Cold War-era buddy action-comedy film, which Apple will release on streaming Sept. 4.
“He knew the world we were playing in very well,” says Goldstein. “We would get notes on very specific things that studio heads don’t normally weigh in on.” Among his key points was making sure the “hard deck” was accurate. “When you do these maneuvers, you have a pretend ground level so that the pilot doesn’t actually crash into the ground — and that’s usually set 5,000 feet above the real ground,” continues Goldstein. “David wanted to make sure we were always above the hard deck when we did these maneuvers.”
The trailer begins with Reynolds’ Troy “Assassin” Kelly crashing his plane behind enemy lines in Russia, being nursed back to health by an America-obsessed former KGB officer, Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh).
“The intention in the film and in the trailer was to give you a bit of a rug pull in terms of the genre and tone. At first, it could almost be the setup to a horror movie. We always talked about this as being kind of a spiritual cousin to Misery,” says Daley, referencing the Stephen King novel and movie of the same name from Rob Reiner, about a woman who nurses her favorite novelist back to health while also keeping him prisoner.
The trailer then cuts to Branagh’s Nikolai rescuing his new American friend and beating up a group of men in a restaurant. It’s a change of pace for Branagh, the Shakespearean thespian and filmmaker who worked to do as much of the action himself as he could.
“He would get to the set early and practice these stunts and fight moves very elaborately,” says Goldstein. “We would get videos of him walking through and mumbling the moves to himself like a crazy person. And then you would see it on the day he really devoted himself to it.”
Indeed, the movie took a page out of Jackie Chan action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s, with long cuts so audiences really see the fight choreography.
“It’s satisfying to be able to see what’s going on, but also all the more challenging, because you have these stunt guys really putting themselves through the wringer. We don’t have the advantage of them being able to fall onto pads out of screen,” notes Daley.
Daley and Goldstein, who directed Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, are known for mixing action and comedy, with other highlights of the trailer including a shot of a young boy who creeps out Reynolds during a dinner scene. The filmmaker’s mandate was for this kid to have a terrible haircut, something that was actually a challenge for the hair department.
Says Goldstein with a laugh: “When you tell people who spend their lives giving people good haircuts to give them a bad haircut, it’s a real battle. You have to force them to do it wrong.”
There’s also a moment where the protagonists fall down a snowy hill, with Reynolds giving a button to the scene: “I don’t love Russia.” That’s actually an alternate line from the final cut of the movie, but it worked for the trailer because it required less context. (“It’s, it’s always a joy to be able to work with someone that can help to give you a, a plethora of options. And that’s what Ryan did,” notes Daley.)
Finally, the trailer ends with Reynolds and Branagh hiding in a closet, as they hide from a Russian official meeting with a sex worker. The duo lists it as among their favorite experiences on set ever, noting their script supervisor had to leave because she was worried she would laugh so hard that she would ruin the take.
Says Daley: “There were, there were moments where [Branagh] was so close to Ryan that they were practically kissing each other.”
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