So, they wanted me to write an action movie. Not just any movie, but a movie taking place in a warehouse in Los Angeles? “Why?” you may think. You may ask why we are aiming for such a specific thing as a Los Angeles warehouse. And do you know what? I’m going to tell you.

I haven’t really done action before. Or rather: I have never done action before. I can’t even think of a scene were someone gets hit. At least not on purpose. I think they must have run out of script writers because this seemed a bit weird. I gladly accepted since it was a pretty big story. The reason why it would take place in a warehouse in Los Angeles is this:

The production company had come across an offer. They could buy, literarily buy, a warehouse in Los Angeles to do whatever they wanted with. It was supposed to be wrecked soon anyways so I guess the previous owner just wanted something to happen. And something happened. I don’t think that he or she, who owned the Los Angeles warehouse before, expected just this.

“OK, so how do you want me to do it? What should it be about?” I asked the director. He answered “It’s up to you. You’re the writer”. We just stared at each other for a few seconds before I explained that this was an unusual order to do things. Unusual to say the least. I mean, what script writer only gets to hear that they are writing a script on warehouse in Los Angeles and no more. The answer is obviously: me.

I just had to grab my pen and get on with it. How do I create a story taking place in a warehouse in Los Angeles? Why is it in Los Angeles and not a warehouse in another city? What makes this one unique? I had to ask that type of questions to get somewhere. Did it help? Barely. This wasn’t the way I was used to work. It wasn’t either the type of movie I usually wrote.

To be fair: Everything with this project was very unusual to me. Not just the whole warehouse in Los Angeles situation, but everything else with it. Damn, this was hard.