BEN WHEATLEY TELLS EMPIRE HOW HE WENT FROM LOW-BUDGET INDIES TO TAKING A BITE OUT OF MEG 2: THE TRENCH, AND LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

MEG 2: THE Trench (to be said aloud in the same way you would say Step Up 2 The Streets) stands out on Ben Wheatley’s CV like a… well, not exactly a sore thumb, more a 75-foot giant shark. Prior to this summer’s gleefully preposterous Jason Statham-starring sequel, the British director tended to stick to smaller British films, often with short shooting schedules and tiny budgets, that allowed him to indulge his darker sensibilities and mordant sense of humour. Those films included his micro-budget debut Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers and A Field In England and, even when big names like Tom Hiddleston, Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson and Lily James began to show up in the likes of High-Rise, Free Fire and Rebecca, Wheatley stayed on this side of the Atlantic. But, after toying with a Tomb Raider sequel written by his wife, Amy Jump, he finally got his feet wet on Meg 2, and took time out from shooting his Channel 4 zombies-versus-pensioners TV show, Generation Z (lower budget, check; darker sensibilities, check; mordant sense of humour, check) to talk to Empire about needing a bigger boat.

Now that we’re a few months down the line from Meg 2’s release, how do you look back on it now, stepping into this massive arena?

I feel like it’s nice to have some distance from it, but it also feels like a wild fever-dream now. It was a big chunk of time. It was two-and-a-half years, or something, I was on it for, all in all.

You’ve shot films in two weeks. So when you realised this was going to eat up the next two years, was there any trepidation involved?

Only on a very basic, ‘would I have enough energy for it?’ level. But after the first couple of weeks it was clear what it was gonna be like, and it was fine. Life will come into the movie in a way that it doesn’t in a three-week or four-week shoot. You literally get older as you do it, you have shifts in perspective, you change as a person as you’re doing it, and that was something I hadn’t quite thought about. You have to keep reassessing what you’re doing, and concentrating on it, otherwise you can kind of meander off in your mind.