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How Civil War Pulled Off Its Vicious White House Siege
Alex Garland needed Tyler Perry’s 330-acre studio, a Navy SEAL, and a dry sense of humor.
Even the cast and crew say they weren’t told what led to the movie’s authoritarian third-term president (Nick Offerman), who has disbanded the FBI and unleashed air strikes on his own citizens, and now aims to stamp out the so-called Western Forces, Texas and California’s “illegal” secessionist movement. He had a premise — “America has disintegrated into a state of civil war,” as Garland describes it today — and an outcome, which he reverse-engineered to focus on four journalists traveling by van from New York City to Washington, D.C., in hopes of questioning a president who hasn’t spoken to the press in 14 months. After dispatching the visual-effects department to measure actual D.C. buildings and streets, production designer Caty Maxey built a scale model that she, Garland, and stunt coordinator Jeff Dashnaw used to map out the sequence so various sets could be stitched together seamlessly.
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