‘Hijack’ Star Idris Elba Says “First-Look Deals Are A Lot Of Kicking Tires” As He Reveals His Partnership With Apple Has Run Down

Max Goldbart
·3-min read

“First-look deals are a lot of kicking tires,” Idris Elba said today, as he revealed his high-profile partnership with Apple TV+ has run down following the launch of psychological thriller Hijack.

The deal with Elba and his Green Door Pictures outfit was struck in July 2020 and the only show to emerge from it was Hijack, which is co-written by Lupin’s George Kay and Jim Field Smith.

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Launching on the streamer Wednesday, Elba stars alongside the likes of Archie Panjabi, The Crown’s Ben Miles and Max Beesley as Sam Nelson, an accomplished business negotiator forced to use his guile to save the lives of passengers onboard a hijacked plane making its way to London. Elba is also EPing the series, which comes from 60FortyFilms and Idiotlamp Productions in association with Green Door.

Speaking at a London press conference, Elba said “the cycle of the [first-look] deal has now gone through” but he could continue working with the streamer.

“First-look deals are a lot of kicking tires,” he added. “You are trying to figure out what you can do together. Quite honestly, working with George and the others took a good two-and-a-half years really and you can’t top that, not at this junction. Who knows what comes next but I’m very proud of the fruits of this deal.”

Apple also has deals in place with the likes of Malala Yousafzai but these deals have become less common in the past couple of years as the U.S. studio and streaming model faces various struggles.

Fighting on a plane

Hijack takes place mostly on a plane, in real time across seven episodes, and Elba’s character spends the entire duration on the flight. The Hobbs and Shaw and Luther star opened up about shooting fight sequences in a such a crowded setting, in which 120 days worth of filming took place. Elba joked that “it felt like we were flying to Mars” due to the length of the time the team spent filming in the plane.

“[The fight scenes] were choreographed within the space,” he added. “It’s not easy to manoeuvre around when you’re frightened of getting shot and don’t want a plane to go down. All this stuff was part of the design and the action.”

Although Elba’s character is an integral part of the attempt to foil the hijackers, he said Sam Nelson “plays against the type” of roles he has had in the recent past.

“He’s more cerebral, quite vulnerable and has a lot going on with his family internally,” he added.

“It felt fresh to try something linear”

Kay, who also created Netflix police anthology Criminal, said he had a lightbulb moment when he realized the flight length was roughly the length of a TV series, and at this point thought to himself “Why don’t we run it for real?”

“It felt like a magnified experience of a hijacking and just felt right,” he added.

“We didn’t want flashbacks or the audience to have any information that the characters on board didn’t already have. TV is full of shows that are mixing timelines and flashbacks so it felt fresh to try somthing linear.”

And according to Field Smith, filming in real time on the plane meant “we were wedded to every single decision behind the production.”

“We couldn’t swerve around anything – we had to take it head on,” he added. “Scripts were written to the real-time storyline and couldn’t be skipped. Moments that would normally seem inconsequential were so important and I wanted them to feel like they lasted forever.”

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