The high stakes thriller Paranoia takes us deep behind the scenes of global success to a deadly world of greed and deception. The two most powerful tech billionaires in the world (Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman) are bitter rivals with a complicated past who will stop at nothing to destroy each other.
A young superstar (Liam Hemsworth), seduced by unlimited wealth and power falls between them, and becomes trapped in the middle of the twists and turns of their life-and-death game of corporate espionage. By the time he realizes his life is in danger, he is in far too deep and knows far too much for them to let him walk away.
Inside Paranoia
Is it paranoia if they’re really after you?
Adam Cassidy is a bright young rising star at his global tech company who just wants a life different from that of his working-class father still struggling to make ends meet. But when Adam makes one naive mistake, he is forced into becoming a covert corporate spy and obtain trade secrets at a rival company. He gets an instant pass into the opulent and ruthless world of the rich, and sees how this other half lives with a corner office, ready-made luxury apartment and fast car.
But before he knows it, he is snared between two tech-world icons with titanic wealth and a mighty system of power to watch – and control – his every move. When Adam decides he wants out, he discovers that they will go to shocking lengths to keep their secrets concealed. A deadly cat and mouse game ensues and Adam must do all he can to protect himself and the ones he loves.
Taking the role of Adam Cassidy is Liam Hemsworth, the Australian up-and-comer who recently garnered global attention playing Gale in the blockbuster The Hunger Games. The filmmakers saw in him all the qualities of both youthful, daring and hard-won integrity they were looking for in Adam.
“He’s gorgeous, charismatic and charming, but Liam is also very accessible,” says Producer Alexandra Milchan. “You feel that he’s someone who is really on the rise and wants it, but at the same time he has the class and dignity that allow him to question that. He also has a maturity and a work ethic that is rare.”
Director Robert Luketic was equally impressed. “I found him to be a wonderful surprise in this role,” he says. “From the start, we shared the same vision of what his character should be. Adam’s values really resonated with Liam and as he responds to seeing his loved ones threatened, I watched him blossom.”
For Hemsworth, his character is someone who gets savvier the harder he is pushed. “Adam has tech smarts, but he also has street smarts,” he observes. “He starts out as someone I think everyone can relate to: a guy with big dreams who has grown up in a low-income family who wants to reach for the stars. But when he gets into the position where he really can do that, and sees what it’s all about, he realizes it’s not exactly the life that he wants.”
Hemsworth was challenged to reveal how Adam transforms in the middle of the jeopardy he is in. “At the start of his spying, I think it feels like a game to him and he kind of buys into that game,” the actor notes. “It’s really fun for him getting a new apartment and cool cars and having money, but as it goes on, he realizes how serious this game is and once he’s in deep, he starts to see that his very life is at stake.”
The two powerful men endangering his life – Wyatt and Goddard – gave Hemsworth a thrilling opportunity to work closely with both Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford. “Gary is scary as hell as Wyatt,” Hemsworth muses. “He doesn’t hold anything back and he can look you in the eye smiling while he tells you that he’s going to kill you. He’s very gentle and kind in the morning and then we would do rehearsal and he was spitting in my face and yelling at me with amazing intensity.”
Hemsworth notes that Ford also transformed in frightening ways. “Harrison is a really nice guy with a soft-spoken demeanor and Goddard is that way on the outside. But inside, Harrison reveals that Goddard has an edge to him that’s quite mean and very powerful,” he says. “Adam really falls under his spell and it’s easy to see why he starts to idolize and trust him, until he realizes Goddard might not be as nice as he seems.”
Even as Adam is fighting to stay one step ahead of Wyatt and Goddard, he is also falling in love – with one of Goddard’s star executives and a woman who has no idea he isn’t who he says he is. Hemsworth particularly enjoyed exploring this unusually thorny relationship with Emma, played by Amber Heard. “Adam is truly falling for Emma, so he doesn’t want to be stealing from her and spying on her, but he’s forced to lie from the start, which makes it very complicated for them,” he says.
It all comes to a head, Hemsworth believes, when Adam realizes that he is no longer just acting as a spy… he is being spied on himself, with the intent of terminating him when he’s no longer useful. “Adam’s whole world is turned upside down when he realizes that these guys are watching him,”
Hemsworth explains. “That’s the moment he understands that they’re beyond the law and they’re never going to let him out of this alive. His life and everyone he loves are threatened – and he’s going to have to find a way to outsmart these guys.”
To help build the danger surrounding Adam to a fever pitch, Luketic worked closely with a great team headed by director of photography David Tattersall, production designers David Brisbin and Missy Stewart and costume designer Luca Mosca – who create his sleek new life, including his luxury apartment outfitted in stylish Armani Casa furnishings, which cleverly conceal surveillance devices.
Early on, Luketic decided he wanted to go for a realistic depiction of the grandiose wealth that Adam turns away from when he decides to go up against Wyatt and Goddard’s empires. “We’re in a post-recession era,” he observes. “It’s a new world where the people with money are a bit more restrained. It’s a sign of our times and the film reflects that. So while Adam is certainly enveloped in a world of luxury goods, he isn’t about flashing bling. He also quickly realizes it’s not the beautiful cars and clothes that make him happy; it’s the chance to create his own technology ideas. But he’s not going to get a chance to do that ever again, if he doesn’t find a way to take these men down.”
Kingpins of Paranoia
In a war between kings, can a pawn change the game?
To take on the roles of Nicolas Wyatt and his former partner-turned fierce-rival Jock Goddard, the filmmakers knew they would need two actors capable of embodying brilliant, eccentric, hugely ambitious men whose unbridled thirst for power has made them capable of menace and even murder.
They found that in the explosive pairing of Academy Award®-nominated actors Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, who first worked together on the hit thriller Air Force One, with Ford playing the U.S. President and Oldman the relentless Russian terrorist who hijacks his plane. Here, however, they would both be challenged by characters unlike any they have taken on in their diverse careers – men who once wanted to change the world with life-altering technology but have fallen into an obsessive, cat-and-mouse game to one-up each other.
“It was like a dream to put these two back together again,” muses Alexandra Milchan. “Their characters couldn’t be more different and yet Harrison and Gary are alike in many ways. They are both equally funny, charming, extremely smart and generous. They both really loved the characters they were playing, even though they are villains, and they both understood the source of their greed and their desire to play God with the universe around them to a certain degree.”
“Harrison walks, talks and feels like integrity personified – the very ideal of an upstanding American leader – which makes his turn to the dark side in Paranoia so compelling,” notes producer William Johnson. “It was equal parts pleasure and terror to watch him seduce and destroy.”
Oldman was drawn right away to the screenplay. “It plays like a thriller, but it’s got a twist that I didn’t see coming,” Oldman notes. And he was equally drawn to working with Luketic. “I like his energy and his enthusiasm,” he says.
More than that, Oldman quickly developed his own personal take on Nicolas Wyatt as one of the self-made industrialists of the digital era. “I play Nick as a guy who is working-class, self-taught, and a former whiz kid who has a real flair for technology,” he explains. “The character was originally an American but I presented to Robert a trans-Atlantic ex-pat who has found success here. It adds an interesting dynamic to things.”
Wyatt has indeed found success in America, the kind of head-spinning success only the very elite will ever taste, which was a lot of fun for Oldman to jump into. “I said to Robert at one point, ‘You’ve fulfilled all my dreams of driving a Bentley, wearing wonderful suits and stepping out of my own private helicopter,’” Oldman muses.
While Wyatt may have reached the very pinnacle of corporate ambition, he recognizes what he thinks is a kindred spirit from the minute he meets Adam, and he suspects he can use Adam’s smarts and ambition for his own nefarious ends. “Adam is a smart, low-level kid but like Wyatt once did, he has that flair for tech,” says Oldman. “He can relate to Adam, but then, of course, Wyatt puts him in a real predicament.”
Wyatt presses Adam to spy into Goddard’s secrets, their relationship too grows more complicated, rife with increasing mistrust and subterfuge. This, says Oldman, is the fun of the story.
“The audience gets carried along on Adam’s anxiety as he becomes more and more morally compromised,” Oldman says. “You ask: what would I do in that sort of situation? Would I keep going for the money? But the deeper and deeper he gets in, the more Adam realizes everything he is doing, and everything around him, is based on lies, until he’s had enough.”
Oldman was especially thrilled to create the explosive collision between Wyatt and Goddard with Harrison Ford – and he says that Ford took him by surprise in the role of Wyatt’s all too savvy foe. “I was really impressed,” he says. “It’s kind of a different character for him and he did some really fine work.”
Says Ford in turn of Oldman: “I’ve always enjoyed watching Gary no matter what he is doing. Wyatt is a fascinating, bitter, angry character, who believes my character, Goddard, would never be the success he is without him. Working with him made the whole thing great fun.”
Ford was drawn not only to reuniting with Oldman but to the rich themes of Paranoia. “I see it as a cautionary tale of a young man led by blind ambition into a trap. Adam’s a kid with a normal, moral life until ambition nearly overwhelms his judgment and he gets himself into a contest with people who are formidable and ruthless,” he says. The filmmakers gave Goddard and Wyatt contrasting, individual styles, right down to their cars.
“For Goddard’s main car in the movie, we used a Fisker, a car that hasn’t really been seen yet on the big screen,” notes Milchan, referring to the rare, luxury hybrid. “Likewise, Wyatt drives a classic Bentley. The cars really belong to their personalities, and that’s also true of their clothing and their interior design choices.”
But the real sparks emerged from whenever Oldman and Ford were on set together. “What was interesting to me is that both these great actors are quite unassuming and gentle when you meet them,” observes Luketic. “But as soon as the word action is called they turned into these incredible forces.”
Creating Paranoia
Information is the most dangerous weapon
Paranoia began with Joseph Finder’s New York Times best-selling techno-thriller novel of the same name. The book hit upon what would soon become some of the biggest questions of our times: Has corporate power grown out of control? Where is the line between mining digital data and dangerous, invasive surveillance? What happens when CEOs operate outside the law? – all in a fast, intense read. Finder encountered a world where multi-nationals now have more riches and wield more political influence than entire nations.
“As, I was researching the novel, I started thinking what would happen if a corporation needed a piece of transformational technology that they knew their competitor had? How far would they go to get it. That’s how I came up with Adam Cassidy,” Finder explains. “In some ways, he’s the classic guy who is forced into being a spy. But his story also takes on the whole idea of identity, about people forming relationships that are based on falsehoods and impersonation, about conscience and about doing the right thing – all of which is happening underneath the fun and suspense.”
Producer Alexandra Milchan read the book and was inspired to bring the story hurtling into the even starker realities of the 2013 corporate world – at the bottom rungs of which a savvy, wired youth culture is confronting a changing digital reality and tough economic times.
“I read the book, and I loved it,” Milchan recalls, “but since it’s about technology and corporate espionage, which are constantly changing, I felt it needed to be updated. I started talking to Joe Finder, and he completely embraced the idea. He was so excited and supportive.”
Milchan, joined by fellow producers Scott Lambert, William D. Johnson and Deepak Nayar, next began a search for a director who could bring a fresh, fast, youthful take to the material. This led to Robert Luketic, the Australian director who made his first splash with the influential blockbuster Legally Blonde, and went on to direct a string of hit comedies. But what got Milchan so excited about him was his breakout crime drama, 21, about 6 MIT students who found a way to take Vegas casinos for billions.
“I believed Robert was the perfect director for Paranoia, because every time I described what I wanted to do in this movie, I used 21 as an example,” the producer explains. “Paranoia had a complex tone to achieve – part wish fulfillment, part thriller, part youth culture story. Robert has not only done so many amazing movies, he also really gets that strong youth energy, and he also really gets romance, which is another strong angle in Paranoia. Then, when I met him we developed an amazing bond of trust.”
End of trust would take them all the way to production. The filmmakers started talking about the story not only in terms of an edge-of-your-seat corporate thriller pitting two ferociously competitive billionaires against each other but also as a young man’s search for identity in an age when identity is completely changeable from instant to instant, when technology leaves us feeling watched even in our most personal moments, and when the future couldn’t be more uncertain. They saw Adam Cassidy on the brink not only of the most extreme personal danger but also of a cultural shift.
Luketic, too, was excited by this idea – and by the suspense of the story. “It’s a very timely tale that speaks to this new generation of Millennials who feel they’ve had their dreams stolen away – but I also love that it’s just so entertaining. It has a lot of thrills, and it has characters who are great fun to watch.”
The director was especially intrigued by the challenge of mirroring the title and capturing the paranoia of modern life, in which cameras are in every pocket and our daily data is being analyzed by companies and government agencies – all countered by the fact that what was once private info is now displayed on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
“Adam is in the world where we all live now – a world that is all about data mining, and where everyone leaves all kinds of trails they don’t even realize they are leaving,” Luketic notes. “Never before in history have we had so much of ourselves so accessible to the world. That was a lot of the inspiration for what we present on the screen. Ultimately, nowhere is safe for Adam because there is nowhere he can hide out of view. He is being surveyed from cameras hidden in walls and people are tracking him through his phone. It goes to the question of whether there’s a danger to having all this information about ourselves out there for the taking.”
Using the initial script by Barry L. Levy, Luketic and Milchan spent months developing a draft with Jason Hall, to expand on these themes. Hall notes, “We looked at the cross-section of corporate technology and youth culture – and at the same time, we also explore the themes of greed, loyalty and friendship that Adam grapples with. It’s one thing to hear your parents say ‘Money isn’t the answer to all your problems,’ but Adam gets a chance to prove that to himself.”
Contrasting with Adam are the characters of Nicolas Wyatt and Jock Goddard, who embody the nolimits corporate values of the early 21st century to a T. They are the tech gods of their generation, the rarified 1% to whom success has brought more money than anyone can fathom, yet it hasn’t slowed down their drive – just shifted it from creative idealism to a poisonous focus on winning and profit above all.
yone was excited about giving audiences a glimpse into the modern-day industrialists who often lead secretive lives. “Our culture is obsessed with billionaires – the eccentricities that they have, the lives that we imagine they lead, the influence they have on the world. We thought it would be very fun to peek into that world… and into its costs,” says Hall.
Novelist Finder was thrilled when he read the final adaptation. “The screenplay makes the story a kind of generational statement,” he says. “It’s about what it’s like right now to be in your twenties entering the working world and watching the whole structure crumble. I think it gets to the alienation that a lot of kids feel when they realize the corruption, and the amount of gamesmanship, that are all part of today’s corporate life.”
The fast-paced intensity and of-the-moment themes of the script quickly drew attention throughout Hollywood. “The script was a bit of a lightning rod,” recalls Luketic. “The response was immediate and we very quickly had Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford joining the cast. I sometimes had to pinch myself to realize this was actually all happening in this way.”
Paranoia’s Supporting Players
The power is in the eye of the beholder
Joining Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford in Paranoia is a diverse supporting cast of both rising stars and veteran award winners including Amber Heard, Lucas Till, Embeth Davidtz, Julian McMahon, Josh Holloway and Richard Dreyfuss.
Amber Heard, who first broke out in the hit comedy Pineapple Express, takes on the role of Emma Jennings, the rising young executive who gets involved with Adam never knowing that he is secretly spying on her company. Heard says she couldn’t resist the character. “She is such a smart, independent woman. She’s had to work her way up in this cutthroat, competitive, technical company full of men, so she knows what that takes. And I think she’s fascinated by the new guy, Adam, because he’s the opposite of everything she’s used to. He comes from a kind of real world and there’s something different about him. They fall in love but under very dangerous circumstances. In a way, they are coming of age in the most high-risk environment.”
Heard particularly enjoyed working with Liam Hemsworth in a role that veers between romance and breathless intrigue. “Adam is someone who comes into the company as the new, big-eyed kid full of ideas and energy and wanting to earn a place for himself. Liam is wonderful at that because he has that same sweet, earnest, infectious quality of enthusiasm,” she says.
Luketic notes that Heard brought something equally special to the role of Emma. “She did a really great job of understanding this character’s unique background and how she has learned to maneuver in this tech world. She’s remarkably beautiful but she’s also very smart – I would constantly find her reading these complex, philosophical books – and she brought that combination to Emma.”
as Till, best known for playing Havok in X-Men: First Class, takes the role of Kevin, Adam’s best friend and a brilliant programmer, who watches as Adam starts leading the life they’ve imagined since they were little kids in Brooklyn – without him. “When Adam suddenly gets this massive amount of success, their paths split,” notes Till. “Kevin is struggling just to find a job and to him, it looks like Adam has sold out. But really, I think Adam wants to protect his friends. Just as it looks like Kevin is going one way and Adam is going another, they come back together.”
Embeth Davidtz – the actress whose wide-ranging roles span from Schindler’s List to The Amazing Spider-Man to Mad Men – portrays Judith, the cold but savvy corporate psychologist who is Nicolas Wyatt’s right-hand woman and Adam’s trainer as a corporate spy.
“Judith had to be both a charmer and an intellect, as well as someone who will do anything to succeed, and Embeth was able to embody all of that,” says Milchan. “She gave us moments of being very nice, very seductive, very inviting and then being a total snake, capable of betrayal on the deepest level. ,In a way, Judith creates Adam as a corporate spy like Frankenstein’s monster and then she abandons him to be eaten alive.”
Working alongside Judith is the even more frightening Miles Meachum, Wyatt’s head of security. Taking the dark role is Julian McMahon, the Australian actor renowned for his Golden Globe nominated role in the hit series Nip/Tuck. McMahon describes Miles as “Wyatt’s consigliore. We’re talking about a company valued in the multi-billions and he’s the guy whose job it is to make sure everything stays in place for Wyatt.”
It is Meachum who launches a breakneck campaign of ever-intensifying surveillance and intimidation that pushes Adam to the extreme edges of fear. “Meachum is the face of the state of paranoia that Adam finds himself in,” McMahon states. “He’s constantly there putting pressure on Adam and, when he gets the word from his boss, he won’t hesitate to get rid of him. He starts off kind of charming and helpful to Adam, but he becomes more and more scary, dangerous and threatening. He takes the technology we all have in our lives to the extreme, using it to assure Adam has no way out when they decide to literally terminate him.”
Throughout, McMahon enjoyed watching Liam Hemsworth react to his character. “Liam keeps ramping up the intensity throughout the movie. He’s got that real fire,” he says.
On the other side of the law is FBI Agent Gamble, portrayed by Josh Holloway, known for his roles on Lost and in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Gamble further complicates Adam’s dilemma by asking him to turn against Wyatt as a double agent and help the Feds bring him down. “Gamble is basically betting that Adam has a good soul,” explains Holloway. “He knows that Wyatt and Goddard think that they are the untouchables, but he’s determined to touch them. He’s been hunting them for years.”
As Adam falls into the dizzying abyss of corporate wars and surveillance, the closer he grows to the only person who can still give it to him straight: his father Frank as played by Academy Award winner Richard Dreyfuss. A blue collar worker who made his own compromises to take care of his family, and now faces medical bills he can’t pay, Frank still has something to teach Adam when it comes to integrity.
Dreyfuss took the role because he liked the themes of the script and what proves to be an ironclad father-son bond, even in the face of powerful evil. “The story is almost frighteningly current,” he says, “and the character I play becomes kind of the moral template for Adam and for the story. Frank’s not a man of a lot of words, but I think you can see that a lot of what is good and decent about Adam comes from Frank.”
Frank is loath to watch his son get betrayed, but he also knows Adam has to learn to navigate this new world for himself. “I think Frank really tried to raise Adam on what was important. He tried to tell him that the world’s values could be very shallow yet very easy to be trapped in… but Frank has also lived long enough to know that his son has to go through this on his own. He loves his son and he trusts that ultimately he is going to do the right thing,” says Dreyfuss.
Once on the set, Dreyfuss especially enjoyed working with Luketic. “Robert is very open and he has a very good ear, not only for what he wants, but when a new idea is suggested, he then builds on that,” he explains.
Luketic was equally captivated by Dreyfuss and how he brought the role to life. “Richard and Liam created a very natural and believable father-son relationship, and Frank has become one of the bestloved characters in the film. Richard plays Frank as someone who has seen the world changing, who realizes the promises made to workers aren’t going to come true, but who still has his values intact. In many ways, he represents the emotional heart of the film because Richard is so very authentic.”
Yet even Frank is powerless to keep Adam safe as he tries to take control of the game from the men who have set out to use and destroy him. For Robert Luketic, crafting that escalating atmosphere of suspicion and fear at every turn was the film’s bottom line. “Every element of the film, from the performances to the photography, is meant to pull the audience into Adam’s increasing peril,” concludes Luketic. “You’re constantly asking yourself – What would I do in his position? How could I possibly turn the tables and escape?”
It is these timely questions and fears that establishes Paranoia as an intense and thrilling ride as Adam navigates this new world and tries to beat these corporate powerhouses at their own game.
Paranoia
Directed by: Robert Luketic
Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, Amber Heard, Harrison Ford, Lucas Till
Screenplay by: Jason Dean Hall, Barry Levy, Joseph Finder
Production Design by: David Brisbin, Missy Stewart
Cinematography by: David Tattersall
Costume Design by: Luca Mosca
Set Decoration by
Nancy Nye: David Smith
Music by: Junkie XL
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexuality, violence and language.
Studio: Relativity Media
Release Date: August 16, 2013
Related Link: View the Full Production Notes for Paranoia
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