Mark Williams Interview: Blacklight
Liam Neeson is back with a vengeance in Blacklight. The new action-thriller centers on Travis Block, an off-the-books cleaner for the FBI tasked with pulling undercover agents out of dangerous situations as he finds himself caught in the center of a deadly government conspiracy.
In time for the film's theatrical release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with director Mark Williams to discuss Blacklight, reuniting with Liam Neeson, filming in the midst of the pandemic, the future of Ozark and more.
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Screen Rant: Blacklight is an interesting one in that it really sort of flew on my radar during development, how did this one sort of come about?
Mark Williams: It was a script that I found that was that was actually set in 1971, about COINTELPRO, which was J. Edgar Hoover and the program that he had about counterintelligence. But I knew it was a little dated, and it wasn't really gonna live up to current audiences, especially when you throw the action genre part of it into it. So I really wanted to update it and then as I was thinking about it, I thought, «You know what, the program might have ended in 1971, but they might still be doing this stuff,» which wouldn't surprise me with all the alphabet agencies, who knows what they're really doing behind closed doors and whatnot.
So I transplanted it to today, added some of the «thrills and spills,» as Liam says, to the car chases and the gunfights and all that. We kept it under the radar, partly because this is all during COVID version one, where it was really hard to mount a movie, especially of this size and scale. So we were just being careful and thoughtful and I went to the other side of the world to Australia to shoot
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