Quotes

[on 13 Hours (2016)] Probably the biggest challenge was remaining completely true to the events that transpired that night. Any time you are doing a real story or a true story, there is that temptation to say, 'Well, it would be better if this would happen or that would happen.' But there is not a thing in this movie that is not verifiable by two or more sources. (...) We got all five [contractors] together and we all realized there was a book there and eventually a movie. [2016]

[on why they picked the January date for 13 Hours (2016)] Because traditionally, these movies, similarly-themed movies, have done very well in January. It's the window that American Sniper (2014) was released in, and it's the window that Lone Survivor (2013) was released in. [2016]

You know, I think what's happened in the last number of years is because of the media and because of television, the media documentaries, reality shows, etc., etc., etc., we've all become much more savvy. And I think whereas John Wayne spoke to a particular tone in the country and so on at that time, I think we know it's a much more complex and complicated and shaded and gray world today. So I think today, depiction of heroes have to really (...) exist in a very real world context. [2016]

[on casting 13 Hours (2016)] What was most important to us was to keep the audience involved with the real story, and to continue to have the audience feel that they were there on the ground with these real guys. And we didn't want the audience distracted by movie stars. So we very purposely set about casting the best actors, again, I think we have just a spectacular, spectacular cast, but they are not people whom you have identified with a particular role or a particular set of movies, or anything like that. We really wanted the event and these real guys to continue to feel like they are the stars of the movie. (...) The thing about John Krasinski, and it's funny, I made a movie about two years ago called Edge of Tomorrow (2014) with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. And Emily is married to John, so I got to know John in that context. I knew that he came from a military family. I knew this was a world he really understood. And it was pure instinct. I asked John to come in and audition, and in the very audition, he completely knocked us out. [2016]

[on testing 13 Hours (2016)] ...when you make a movie, you go and do some market research. And one of the really extraordinary experiences that I've had in this movie is that the quadrant, or the group of people whom the movie actually tested higher with were women 35 and above. [2016]

[on working with Michael Bay on 13 Hours (2016)] There were a couple of other Benghazi movies that were circling around, but they were not movies, they were not scripts that had this level of truth and reality to them, only because we had the rights to the guys' stories that were there on the ground. The others were all based on say so. So I had known that Michael had turned the others down. It was a shot in the dark, and I wasn't particularly optimistic, only because I knew he had turned the others down, and I wish I could say it was particularly hard. We got him the script, he read it over a weekend. The following Monday or Tuesday, I was sitting with him at his house. By then, he had a script that was fully annotated and he had notes written on it, both on the script and the book. And by the end of that meeting, he said I want to make this as my next movie. I want to start it in the spring, which was six months ahead from the time that we sat and met, and we were green lit, as it were, as a movie, within a matter of weeks. [2016]