After a critically acclaimed trio of seasons, Walker returns once more at Christmas with 'Storm Front', an epic, feature-length adventure for Alec and his crew. MZPtv caught up with writer Adam Scott in an exclusive conversation with fellow executive producer A. J. Black, to shed some light on what we might expect when the special premieres this Christmas Eve...
Another Christmas - another Walker movie event. This is becoming an MZP tradition!I know! Mad, isn't it? Though if it's a tradition then I'm happy to continue it for as long as I can.
How does it feel to be writing another Walker feature?It feels great is the honest answer - both for the chance to be writing these characters again after a little break, and also because this is a basic story that I've had in mind since the earliest days of the series, so it feels fantastic to finally be getting to tell it.
Storm Front, then? What can you tell us about what to expect?It's easily one of the biggest stories we've ever done. Even before I started the tradition of Walker Christmas Specials with Absolution last year, I had always intended to write this story as a movie, just because the scale of the piece seemed to demand that. Also there was a deliberate decision to do something very different to last year's movie: Absolution is perhaps the darkest I've ever taken this show, for perfectly valid reasons, but I had no desire to go back there again. That movie was conceived as being something of a Neil Marshall movie in style - a small group of people stuck in a desperate situation where everything including the weather is trying to kill them - plus, because of the way the story panned out, I couldn't use any of the regulars bar Alec. With Storm Front I wanted to go in completely the opposite direction. If Absolution was a Neil Marshall movie, I wanted Storm Front to be a Christopher Nolan movie, telling a very personal character driven story but on a gigantic epic scale. I think we've just about managed it; it was a bugger to write, but it's been one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had writing Walker.
JONATHAN RHYS-MEYERS as 'Alec Walker'
Season Three ended in the Summer on some pretty cataclysmic revelations and cliffhangers - how far will Storm Front go in picking up those threads?A lot of the storylines set up in the finale of season three will be followed up on. We left season three with the discovery of the Atlantis landmass floating in the North Sea - that's a major part of this tale. We have Alec and Chloe as a couple now, that will figure heavily into it. We had a warning from the Prime Minister that the entire MI-16 setup was operating on thin ice, and that will definitely be a major part of this. But the biggest element by far will be the story of Raina Davidov, who we revealed at the end of the last season to be the first female Knight in the history of the world and a key player in the mythology of the whole series. How that will impact on Alec and on the lives of everyone else is the main plank of the story.
Can we expect to see all our beloved regulars? Alec obviously but Chloe? Jackson? Boone? Wexler? Neriah?All of the above and plenty of new characters as well - plus an appearance by a character by the name of Gordon Dessler, someone we've been dying to introduce since the days of The DSR, and when people see who's playing him I think they'll understand why. In a funny sort of way, this episode is really Raina's story - we met her in the season three finale, now it's the first chance she's had to deal with the fallout, so introducing her to the team properly has been a lot of fun. Also, it's going to be the end of the road for certain characters and elements of the series as we look to redefine the show a bit for season four - but I'm keeping schtum on that for now.
LEONARD ROBERTS as 'Jackson Byers'
Season Four is due some time in 2012 - come on, give us a few morsels about what you have planned…Season four is in early preparation right now, and I can confirm that the show's going to undergo something of a format change this year. I won't say what exactly, but it's a brand new type of storytelling that I'm dying to finally implement on Walker. Plus the actual tale we're going to tell in season four is something that a lot of fans have been dying to see since the word go - a lot of the big questions of the show will be answered. And there might be another sneaky little surprise coming for Walker fans sooner rather than later, but we'll leave it at that.
Finally, what else lies up the Adam Scott sleeve next year?I'm currently working on Dracul, a movie that I'm co-writing with the inimitable Chris Haigh which should appear early in the new year. I'm also seriously excited to be writing another mini-series, The Payback, which I want to get stuck into quite quickly. Beyond that, well … let's just say if you live by the sword, be careful you don't lose your head...
Walker airs exclusively on MZPtv throughout 2011 and beyond...
