Murder Mystery 2 director Jeremy Garelick has revealed some details about the film’s incredible climactic sequences, which take place on the Eiffel Tower – and how they established a world record while filming.
Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler return for the Netflix mystery-action caper sequel, this time as investigators, and are accompanied by new cast members Mark Strong, Mélanie Laurent, and Jodie Turner-Smith.
Strong, 59, plays former MI6 hostage negotiator Connor Miller, who is brought in as a professional to try to solve the case after Nick and Audrey’s billionaire friend Maharajah Vikram Govindan (Adeel Akhtar) is kidnapped in the middle of his wedding celebrations and held for a $50 million (£40.9 million) ransom.
He, Aniston, and Sandler all end up working together with other performers at Paris’ most renowned landmark for some exciting action scenes.
According to Garelick, they were the first film to capture an action on the structure.
‘We did, in fact, get to film at the Eiffel Tower. We had a fantastic action crew. Kelly Phelan was the first female to leap off the Eiffel Tower, and her name is now in the Guinness Book of World Records,’ he told Metro.co.uk.
‘It was the first time a stunt was allowed to be shot on the Eiffel Tower for a film.’
Explaining how they pulled it off, he added: ‘We also recreated the top three levels of the Eiffel Tower [thanks to] Perry Blake, our incredible production designer. We built that on stage and we had incredible visual effects – so it was a combination.’
When it came to exploits, the director admitted that his actors were all “really game to do more and more and more.”
‘They liked kicking ass, but our producers would stop them and be like, “You know what, let’s let Kelly do this.” But they did get to do a lot of their own stunts.’
He also thinks Murder Mystery 2 brings something new to the screen.
‘We’ve seen Jennifer and Adam do Jennifer and Adam in several films – you see them all the time and you can imagine what they would do in this movie. But no one’s ever, I don’t think, done action in the way that we do in this film and it’s fun to watch the two of them kick ass.’
The film was shot in Hawaii, Toronto, and Paris, which Garelick explains was a conscious decision following the Covid lockdowns of recent years.
He said that the movie’s team ‘wanted every scene in every location to be extravagant and to give the audience an opportunity to escape and see the world when they’ve been locked in their house’.
‘We want the locations to be stars of the move as big as Jen and Adam. So, the Eiffel Tower is a huge part of the movie, the Arc de Triomphe is a huge part of the movie – and I’m killing that every single time I say it, and I’ve been practising for two years!
‘We loved shooting at these locations, the Paris Opera was incredible. It’s amazing to just stare at a blank page and start typing and then show up on set and be like, we’ve shut down the Paris opera and I’m directing it.’
Murder Mystery 2 is streaming on Netflix from Friday, March 31.
Source My Celebrity Life.