It’s been a while since I chatted with Chad Michael Collins so he stopped by to discuss the latest entry in the Sniper franchise called Sniper: G.R.I.T. (Global Response and Intelligence Team) which is out on Home Video and VOD now.
Check out out conversation below.
Your new film, Sniper: G.R.I.T. (Global Response and Intelligence Team) was recently released and is the 10th movie in the Sniper series. What do you think the enduring appeal is of the series with fans?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I’m incredibly blessed I came aboard, way back in the day on Sniper: Reloaded, which was the fourth of the series and now we’re all the way up to number 10 with the release of Sniper: G.R.I.T. (Global Response and Intelligence Team) which is kind of carrying on the team aspect that we established in Rogue Mission and a little bit before that in Assassin’s End, previously. I mean, your guess is as good as mine, I really love doing these things. They seem to have incredible international appeal. You specializing in action films, you know there’s always a market for this, and there’s always an audience for this; people just love their action films. We’re lucky to be able to get the traction and get the eyeballs on the thing that we keep making. I mean, last year we did Sniper: Rogue Mission; we did a summertime release, VOD, and Blu-ray and everything else. Then four or five months later, we released on Netflix in December of 2022. We shot to the top 10 list on Netflix and we stayed there for about nine days peaking at like number five or number six, which just kind of shows that we’re doing something right. Hopefully we keep doing these things right and we keep making more.
What’s interesting is that the Sniper franchise is constantly reinventing itself; how challenging is it to keep it exciting and fresh?
As I always love to say that’s above my pay-grade (laughs). It’s the geniuses at Sony, in particular, our producer at Sony, Daniel, he’s the visionary for this sort of thing. We’ve been really lucky to work with Oliver Thompson, who wrote the last three movies, and he’s established a very different tone, something much more fun, much more popcorn. As you can see, across the last two movies, we’ve leaned into the team aspect and the buddy aspect; the bromance between Brandon Beckett and Agent Zero and all their really fun banter; we’ll also take out the bad guys and have each other’s back. So, that’s kind of a vision that they had for these last few films. I think it adds a really fun popcorn element to it, that just steps a little bit away from the self-righteous, hardcore, high stakes soldier stuff that we’ve done in the past. It just opens it up a little bit more where you get all the action. Then you also get a lot of the gallows humor, a lot of the Butch and Sundance type interactions which I think adds a lot of popcorn entertainment value to things and I think that that’s something that they all came up with and established in terms of their development. I really think it’s paid off; the audiences really seem to be responding to that. If you can get a few laughs in there while you can also blow the heads off some bad guys, why not? Right?
I was going to say this is arguably the most hilariously violent entry of the franchise. I was cheering at the scene where the assassin is waiting in the room and the three of you are just all shooting him at once. Was it deliberate to just up the craziness and the bodycount this time?
(laughs) Yeah, I remember that. When we were talking about this with Oliver who wrote it and he directed this one; he also wrote and directed the last one as well. He wanted this one to play more like a video game. He said “let’s have a ridiculous amount of shootouts, let’s have a ridiculous amount of gunfire” and stuff like that. It wasn’t as hand-to-hand heavy as the previous installment or some of the other ones. Lady Death did the heavy lifting on that. I had a couple of moments here where it was the hand-to-hand stuff because that just naturally comes with close quarters fighting. But really, really, really leaning into Brandon behind the scope, doing his sniper thing with Lady Death, doing her hand-to-hand thing. Then of course, Agent Zero, getting down and dirty with the side arms and Uzis and everything else. That’s fun. So, three different types of bad asses and soldiers, and sticking to what we know and what we do best. It’s really funny but “hilariously violent” is an absolute compliment that I will pass on to our director (laughs).
I also really enjoy Josh Brenner as Intelligence Pete. I think he’s a great addition. What’s it like working with this ragtag group because they’re all such different characters?
You’re right, the personalities are very, very distinct and very fleshed out. I think that’s the advantage of being able to have a team element and carry it into another film is that you get to add the layers, you get to add the wrinkles, you get to build upon and banter about crossed paths and experiences that we’ve shared together, or funny moments that we’ve shared. When I was reading the script, and I saw that Intelligence Pete, who’s our socially aloof resident genius hacker gets paired up to go on a bit of a field mission with the Colonel, who’s the badass, veteran leader of our group; I thought this is going to be gold. This couldn’t be more Odd Couple from a computer nerd who’s never fired a gun to a guy that’s been doing high level CIA military work for 40 plus years which is Dennis Haysbert’s character, the Colonel. I thought that played really, really, well. I love it because you’ve watched many of the iterations and mostly they’ve been one offs. They’ve been Brandon Beckett, Richard Miller aka Billy Zane, and or, Tom Berenger as the original Thomas Beckett character. Then this random rotation of allies like support spotters, or little teams that either everyone gets killed, or they get dissolved and don’t carry on to another film. So, it’s been a real pleasure to be able to take these characters and just extrapolate them and explore them to get to know them a little bit more and see them interact across three movies.
I think if you wanted to do some merchandising, you need to create whatever that orange soda was that they were drinking; it looked really good…
(laughs) Yeah, I loved that fun idiosyncrasy that Oliver wrote in for the Intelligence Pete character, just about his obsession. He’s a connoisseur. Some people are connoisseurs of wines and fine wines, he’s a connoisseur of orange soda, or orange pop, depending on where you live in the United States. So. that’s really a funny wrinkle that he built into that character and that kind of joke lives on as well. But funny enough, I actually came across a Fanta t-shirt, which is a popular orange soda brand and when I showed up to film in Malta last year, I gifted Oliver Thompson with a Fanta t-shirt that he wore on set many, many days and absolutely adored and appreciated.
You’ve been playing Brandon for a few years now. How do you feel just before you slip into the character? Is it just like reuniting with an old friend?
Yeah, that’s what I was touching on earlier; it’s really a pleasure for an actor to be able to build upon a character and have those skills in the back pocket, have those missions in the back pocket, understand what that means to him and what the stakes are and how he approaches his job in the next mission and stuff like that. It’s really fun. In particular, these three sets of movies, where we have the team element, it’s not just having all that those mission experiences in the back pocket, but it’s also what I went through with my squad during those missions, and being able to lean into that. I think as an actor, the more you get to slip into a character again and again, and again, there’s room to just bring out and show more layers and everything else too. It’s been a real pleasure and you don’t get to often do that as one-off characters bouncing from project to project.
Yeah, true. This entry has some great action scenes in it, but what would you say was the toughest one for you to do?
I don’t want to ruin the mystique of Brandon Beckett but I can shoot 15 pages of mission scenes and I can do it from one spot behind my sniper scope. I don’t have to hit anything and that’s kind of spoiling and pulling back the curtain on the movie magic (laughs). So, that job becomes a little easier just because they’re filming the POV and perspective from behind the scope. Then they’re shooting me actually pulling the trigger and readjusting and calibrating and stuff like that. Some of the sniper shots and scenes that I do are some of the easiest parts of my filming experience, because I don’t have to hit the broadside of a barn (laughs). They do all the work from the POV perspective behind the sniper scope of identifying the bad guys and their placement, and everything else. I think some of the harder scenes are when you get into the action choreography; I had a little mini fight scene where I take on some cult guards, and we threw some stunt action stuff in there together, and that we learn on the day and practice a little bit beforehand. So, those days are always harder, those days are always tougher, you’re gonna get a little banged up, especially when you have to deliver dialogue in the middle of a fight scene and shoot out. That stuff becomes challenging, because it’s all about timing because, obviously, no one’s getting hit, and peppered with real bullets (laughs) so everybody has to be on cue and on point, to sell this pretend dance that we do.
We’re just starting to get to know these characters; can we expect to see Part 11? Or maybe even a TV series? I feel like a TV series would work…
Oh, man, it makes sense, doesn’t it? But at the same time, if I think about it from understanding how studios work, and I don’t have a vast understanding of this, but, there’s film sub studios under the Sony banner, there’s Sony TV, and that’s a completely different animal and how much do they overlap? They probably don’t know each other or talk to each other very much at all, as they stay in their respective lane. So, I mean, I’d love to have something long form like a Sniper TV show; that would just be an absolute dream to be able to do one-hour episodes with Brandon on missions, and three episode missions to see things to conclusion. I think it’s built for that. I think it could be a series like that in many ways but I don’t know how these departments talk to each other. I don’t know if that’s ever going to be a possibility. I know I would love it. So, maybe one day, we’ll see… anything’s possible.
We touched on this earlier, but Oliver Thompson has directed the past few films; how would you describe his directorial style to work with?
Oliver is incredibly meticulous; he leaves nothing to chance. He dreams up these beautiful things in his head and then he meticulously storyboards. I remember even on Rogue Mission, he had this massive storyboard that he had literally pasted there on set, and he’s referring there, and he’s talking through the stunt coordinators and he’s got every shot meticulously planned out. He’s very, very, prepared, which you have to be because we don’t have the biggest of budgets to work with. Every day counts, every shot counts, every take counts because we don’t have the advantage of having $50 or $100 million and six months to do these things; we usually get 20 to 25 days so he’s very prepared. He knows what he wants and he’s always looking to find an interesting way to shoot something, which is a testament to him. There are a lot of people who can just do simple shots and say “this is just a filler scene, let’s just get it quick, keep it simple, keep it short, and move on; nothing special here”. But he’s like, “No, we’re going to dolly, we’re going to push, we’re going to zoom in here, we’re going to snap cut to this. He’s very much about putting that stylistic stamp and for me, and I’m not an expert on directors or whatever, but I know who I’m a fan of; a lot of his stuff feels very Tarantino-esque just because of the way he really incorporates wonderful music into this. He also does all the music for these movies. He writes a lot of the original stuff, he puts a little bit of a rock and roll original song in there and as far as composing, that’s all him too. I mean, Oliver could not be wearing more hats unless he was all the actors as well (laughs). He kind of does it all.
You and your co-star Ryan Robbins (who plays Zero) have some great banter in the movies as well. Is there a lot of improvisation or do you stick strictly to the script?
The script when they put it in our hands is so darn good that we’re happy to do it as written; nothing me or Ryan is going to offer is going to improve upon something that’s so well written and so fun. Ryan is a really fine actor and my co-lead; I just thought they were some really fun scenes with me and him. We had a beautiful script and dialogue to work with. More to your point, though, I know that I’ve been in some films and shooting with Josh Brenner, who plays Intelligence Pete and Oliver let him go wild because he’s highly improv trained. He just gives you so much gold and that’s a joke I make with Oliver like, “what do you do with all the improvised takes from Josh Brenner?” (laughs) They’re all so wonderful. They’re all so precious, we can’t keep them all. It must be a real tough time in the editing room deciding which one to keep and which gems to let go of which I suppose is a good problem to have.
How’s the world of Call of Duty going?
Yeah, yeah, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 just dropped in I think like early November so I’ve been playing it a little bit. My Alex Keller character lives on. I’m always grateful as an actor to see my character survive and be put back into the world, back into the universe that he’s a part of. That’s always a sigh of relief for an actor; we’re not making a zombie game or a sci-fi game (laughs). It’s a gritty realism military game so if you’re out, you’re out. There’s no reanimation. There’s no Dr. Frankenstein’s lab for you to put your character back in the game. So, it’s been a lot of fun, it’s been pretty well received. People love the Modern Warfare universe, and the wonderful characters that they’ve established. I’ve been playing it and I’ve been streaming it a little bit on Twitch, and as I always do, showing off my mediocre skills, as they say, and getting usually fried by 11 year olds night after night after night (laughs).
I’m not sure if we’ve discussed this before or not but did you ever have any plans to direct yourself in the future? Would that be a dream or are you more interested in the acting side of things?
I’m much more interested in learning filmmaking in producing, and seeing how these projects come together A to Z. So, I always really try to learn about that. I mean, directing maybe one day, I don’t know; I’m happy doing the acting thing. I think I would definitely like to step more into the Film Producing thing just to understand the process, from start to finish from pre to shooting to post to distribution to sales, and everything else, too. But I’m always a sponge on set; I always want to learn more about what the cameramen are doing and what the shots entail. Obviously, looking at the way they set up lighting and everything else, too. I think it makes you better as an actor, if you can understand a lot more of the technical aspects of things, and you can understand the shots that are being lined up and why. You can work with the camera and the director a little bit easier if you do that. So, nope, no plans to be a director right now. I think it’s maybe something interesting to consider for the future but I’ll just say I got a lot more to learn.
What else do you have coming up?
Well, it was an interesting year; like we were we were talking about earlier we went through six months of the strike. The writers were on strike for just about as long, so we lost half a year of work. I was very fortunate to be filming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and a lot of their ongoing content is my character so that was nice thing. I did an action film back in March, called The Wrecker. I believe, Premiere Entertainment will be distributing sometime soon. But it was great. I got to work with Harvey Keitel, and Danny Trejo. I know there’s a bunch of really fine actors in that one. That was a really nice action film I got to be a part of in Las Vegas before the strike hit. We also did an independent film with the same guys over in Vegas called Desert Dawn, which had Kellan Lutz and Cam Gigandet and I know, they both make their rounds in the action movie circuit. It was really wonderful to work with that crew again, and work with those guys in particular. I expect both those movies to be released in 2024. Like so many actors, we’re back on the hunt. We’re back on the grind. Auditions are starting to come in. Of course, right up against the holidays everything kind of goes dark for a while, but I’m expecting a really fun return to form in 2024.
And hopefully Sniper 11…
(laughs) Yeah, hopefully. I’m always waiting for that call.
Thanks, as always for taking the time to chat. Take care and have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.
You too. Oh, it’s such a such a pleasure, man. It’s been too long and I hope we get to do this again soon.