Interview: Scott Adkins Talks ‘Accident Man’, ‘Deadpool’ Comparisons, and More

Accident Man makes its official debut today, giving fans a unique take on the 1990s comic of the same name. At the center of it all — both in front of and behind the camera — is Scott Adkins.

Adkins stars as Mike Fallon, a hitman whose specialty is making his kills appear to be accidents. Mike is soon thrown into a rather unexpected conflict, when his ex-girlfriend is mysteriously murdered — and he thinks one of his fellow hitmen was responsible.

The film isn’t the first comic book adaptation for Adkins, who previously had roles in both Doctor Strange and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But for Adkins, bringing Accident Man to life was a bit of a passion project, something that extended in unique ways behind the scenes.

Adkins recently sat down with ComicBook.com to talk about making Accident Man, how the film was influenced by his past Marvel work, and why he definitely doesn’t want the film compared to Deadpool.

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ComicBook.com: Since you both co-wrote and starred in the film, I know you have kind of a very personal connection to it. I was wondering what drew you to this story in particular.

Scott Adkins: I was about 14 or 15 and I was walking back from school, and I went into the newsagents. I saw this comic. It was Accident Man. I immediately just loved it. I loved the fact that the guy was a martial arts expert, trained in various styles of martial arts, and he was using his skills to be a hitman, and a hitman that kills people and makes it look like accidents. I just love the comic book was very edgy and didn’t pull any punches. It was quite dark, but I found it very humorous. I harbored this dream since I was a kid, that maybe one day, if I made it as an actor, I could play Mike Fallon on the screen.

I’m very fortunate, to be honest, because what I know now, and I didn’t know before, is that the property was optioned various times by some big producers. I actually met one of them who congratulated me on getting the film made. This was a big producer. He said that he wasn’t able to do it. I don’t know what the reason was, but it didn’t happen, so I feel very fortunate that I was able to do it because I knew the property so well.

I did decide to write it with a friend, another friend from school, who I’ve been friends with from the age of 16. We wrote it together, so it’s really a labor of love, and it’s a long time coming, but I feel very happy that it’s happening. It’s a good feeling inside.

How did you find a balance between adapting the source material straight on, and sort of taking your own liberties with it? Were there any sort of outside influences that you brought in, or were you trying to just kind of stay as consistent to the source material as possible?

We absolutely had to adapt it because if you made the comic that I wanted to make into a movie, if you made it page for page, word for word, you’d have a film that’s about 45-minutes long. We had to flesh it out. We changed some characters. We changed some character names. You start with a template, the comic, and then it becomes its own thing. You expand and you expand, and then you’re only thinking about the script and the comic is almost a distant memory. You want it to be that way. You want to distance yourself from it.

Any fans of the comic will see in the movie that there are some bits of the comic ripped straight out of the pages. Some stuff is exactly the same, and other stuff is quite different, but certainly the tone and the character, who he is in his essence, is the same. Pat Mills did a great job and was the reason why I loved the comic so much, so I didn’t want to change too much of it, but we had to. Otherwise, it would have been a short movie.

You have so many action films in your body of work. What was different to you about this project, aside from your personal connection to it?

Some of my films, and I’ll admit it, it’s fast forward to the next fight. I’m in a position that I’m in because people love the physical side of what I do. I don’t forget that. That’s why I always try to deliver that, but certainly with this film, it feels like a proper movie. You got a proper story. You’re pulled in. You got big, larger than life characters.

What I wanted to do was make it very English. I wanted it to have that sort of Guy Ritchie feel, which I’m sure you’ve gotten from it, because I love … Big fan of Guy Ritchie, and I felt that that would work with the narration. Some people say that you shouldn’t have as much narration in a film, but with a comic book, it lends itself to that because obviously you’re always reading. You’re in the guy’s head. Some of my favorite films are narrated, like Fight Club and Goodfellas, so I was happy to go with that.

I was going to ask about the narration too, since it’s such a big part of the film. How did it feel doing that much narration and having that be such a big part of the story?

It’s funny actually because the film I did with the director before … Jesse Johnson did a film called Savage Dog. When we went to do ADR for that, we knew we were doing Accident Man next, so I just reeled off all the narration as quickly as I could so that we could have it for when we edited the movie, because you don’t want to put it together guessing how long the narration’s going to take. You need to actually hear it.

The idea was to go back in and clean all that up when we were ready to do ADR for Accident Man, but with budget constraints and everything, we actually used about 50 percent of what I had just blurted out on the day after a long day of ADR for Savage Dog and we kept it in the film. That’s the thing about it. You have so long to edit the movie, so long to write the movie, and then you’ve got to shoot it dead quick. When it comes to sound production, you’ve got to get that done dead quick because you’ve only got so much money in the pot, but I think it still works.

What was your favorite scene to shoot in the film, whether action sequences or otherwise?

Probably my favorite bit to film was something that didn’t involve me tearing my limbs to pieces. I love watching myself do action, but I tell you what, it’s hard doing it. It doesn’t get any easier as you get older. I loved acting with Ray Stevenson, and playing with him, and acting with David Paymer. Those are the bits that I really relished. Yeah. I love to watch the action stuff back, but it’s just so physically demanding that it’s not actually enjoyable to do.

You have a few comic book movies under your belt, obviously. Did working on those prepare you for making this movie?

It’s not your average comic book movie, Accident Man. It’s not a lot of CGI and all the rest of it. That’s my experience working on Wolverine and Doctor Strange was green screen and the green screen all day. Really, my own movies were setting me up for Accident Man more, I’d say, but every film gives you a lot of experience in some way.

Since you’ve been in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe side, and the X-Men side of it, what are your thoughts on the Disney/Fox deal that came about recently?

I think it’s great. I actually hope Hugh Jackman comes back to play Wolverine if they’re going to do that. If he’s had enough, then that’s up to him of course. Maybe if you’re going to come back, you need somebody who’s getting ready to do a bunch of more movies and not just a one-off.

Wolverine is my favorite character of the X-Men. I don’t like it when the powers are too outlandish and crazy. What’s great about Wolverine is he’s got claws and he regenerates them and he shanks people. I love that about him. I’m not into the eyes and all of the stuff coming out of the eyes. Get Wolverine in the Marvel Universe, absolutely.

Deadpool. I don’t know about Deadpool because-

Yeah. Deadpool is an interesting part of it.

Also, don’t let anyone say that I’ve ripped off Deadpool. [laughing] Because even the comic book Accident Man predates the comic book of Deadpool. Let’s just get that straight, especially on ComicBook.com.

We absolutely will. Don’t worry about that. That goes into my last question, which is, what are you nerdy about? I know you’ve mentioned Wolverine. You mentioned the Accident Man comic. What else outside of that?

I was a massive fan of the Spider-Man comics as a kid. That’s what I read religiously. All of them are spectacular. Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man. I grew up reading that stuff. My grandmother, I struggled a little bit at school, so what my grandmother would do is she would buy me loads of Marvel comics, and every weekend I would go there and I’d have Thor, Daredevil, but mostly Spider-Man. I was geeky about that. I would love to go to the comic trunk and pick out stuff.

Then other than that, it’s martial arts in movies, which is what I do for a living now. My geekiness turned into my day job, so it all worked out.

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Accident Man is now available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital.