Nick Lyon on Bringing the Terror to ‘On Fire’
The fear of a natural disaster is something that can leave you afraid of losing everything and On Fire really taps into that. While talking to Peter Facinelli, he clearly wanted to tell a story that inspired a conversation. For Fiona Dourif, it was about being a woman determined to save her family and herself at whatever it cost. But in talking with co-director Nick Lyon, a lot of his reasoning behind making the movie came from seeing the world around him ravaged by fires time and time again.
Lyon directed the movie with star Peter Facinelli and in speaking with him, a lot of what made him want to do the movie really was about starting a conversation, much like Facinelli. But it came down bringing all of those stories that Lyon heard from friends together to tell On Fire and make audiences understand just how big of an issue this was. But it all started from Lyon thinking about what he would do in a situation that the characters do find themselves in while trying to escape in On Fire.
“It was a combination of the wildfires were happening around 2017,” he said. “You look up and the skies are orange and there’s just constantly the big fires. There’s the Malibu fires, all that stuff. But I was actually camping with my boys. And I was thinking there’s only one road out of here. What if there was this fire down the road? How in the heck what am I gonna do? And it scared me. So I went and wrote a treatment about a father and a son and how they’re stuck in a fire. And then that kind of was there for a couple years. And then eventually, this film came about.”
You can see our full conversation here:
On Fire is in theaters now.
(featured image: CINEVERSE)
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