Â鶹´«Ã½

“Under other circumstances, you could wind up with people who are like, ‘How are we going to do this?’� he says. “But absolutely everybody involved was determined to figure this out.�

That meant stunts down airplane aisles, adults stashed in overhead bins and flight attendants offering up various tools in order to subdue a plane full of assassins.

Keeping in contact

Josh Hartnett stars in the film as a mercenary who has been hired to find an unidentified criminal aboard a flight from Singapore to San Francisco. Unfortunately, there are countless other assassins also on board, hoping to take him out.

Using an agent on the ground (played by Katee Sackhoff), Hartnett’s character is able to separate the good from the bad.

Sackhoff, meanwhile, is grounded, often acting opposite computer screens or cell phones.

“I definitely felt like I was sequestered on an island,� Sackhoff says. “Josh and I were shooting our scenes concurrently, so we were hearing what the other person was doing and making changes to dialogue and tone and things like that.�

To act while on a phone, she says, “is an interesting challenge. We do it every single day and we don’t think about it. The moment you get on camera, you try to make sure your character is seeming spontaneous because phone calls are.�

The right choice

When Hartnett isn’t conferring with Sackhoff, he’s probably sizing up armrests, wine glasses and tray tables to use as weapons. The choice of actors was simple, Madigan says.

“We wanted to make sure that we had someone who was going to inhabit the non-action parts of this,� Madigan says. “As soon as we knew he might be interested, it was always Josh. There’s a long list of action names that people usually throw out but to get someone that is such a great actor and is so performance-driven was a dream come true.

“I didn’t want it to be like a cliché of a lot of other action characters that we’d seen, and he was very much of the same mind. It was just perfect.�

To make sure shots had a continuous feel, the plane set was connected — from the business class area, where Hartnett is assigned, into a galley, into economy class and then into another galley. First class and the plane’s underbelly were on another set but the main section was long enough to allow characters to race through the aisles. “We could look through two doors and have it all work,� Madigan says. “It’s a plane — it’s real stuff.�

To ensure continuity, “Fight or Flight� had some 100 extras in every shot. When some weren’t available, “we’d grab the costume person (and say), ‘Sit over there at that empty seat,’� Madigan says. “It more or less tracks.�

Because all potential “weapons� haven’t been exhausted, Sackhoff says she texted Madigan after she saw a cut of the film and asked if there was a possibility for sequels “and if Katherine could do some action.�

The flying dog could figure into a sequel, too.

“I really, really, really tried to keep it, but it would have meant the entire shoot we had a dog and dog handlers and all sorts of things that would go along with that,� Madigan says. Financially, it might have been a heavy lift, “but a bit with a dog coming at us? I was just like, ‘I want to see that.’�