Chris Charles and Danny Kravitz on the set of "The Marksman."
When COVID-19 canceled the Los Angeles screening of The Marksman on Jan. 15, screenwriter Chris Charles was still able to attend a sold-out premiere, but it looked a bit different than he had envisioned. Charles and his family rented a 10-seat theater at the Marcus Palace cinema in Sun Prairie across the street from his house. “It was safer than going to the grocery store,” Charles jokes.
Three months later, The Marksman is still playing in select theaters across the country. It was the number one movie in America for two consecutive weeks in January and as of April 6 remained atop the list of highest-grossing independent movies of 2021, according to IndieWire. “When we set out to write this many years ago, we had no idea it would go on to overtake Wonder Woman 1984 at the box office,” says Charles, who wrote the script with screenwriting partner Danny Kravitz, a UW-Madison alum.
Now the movie is sure to reach an even larger audience when it is released on streaming services April 27.
“ I think it’s the kind of movie that will find its audience as it gets out to people who couldn’t go to theaters,” says Kravitz, who lives in Chicago.
The Marksman stars Liam Neeson as Jim, a hardened rancher and ex-Marine who becomes the unlikely defender of Miguel, a young Mexican immigrant fleeing the cartel over the border.
An action drama and road film, The Marksman tells a story of hope and redemption, themes that resonate deeply with the two screenwriters.
Charles grew up in Kennebunk, Maine, where he found a passion for storytelling at a young age. Beginning with drawings and paintings and eventually writing stories of his own, he discovered storytelling was what he really wanted to do.
Kravitz found his love for storytelling when he began writing stories and poetry during high school. “I’m going to make movies, or I’m going to die trying,” Kravitz recalls thinking. His interests brought him to UW-Madison, where he studied film, literature and screenwriting, and hosted occasional open mic nights at the Memorial Union.
During Charles’ sophomore year at Columbia College Chicago, he attended a screenwriting course taught by Kravitz, whom he remembers as a young and passionate teacher.
Charles’ first story — a coming of age road film about an unlikely friendship between two characters — was loosely based on his experiences as a driver for a relative of the Bush family in Kennebunk one summer. The story’s major themes of redemption and overcoming adversity caught Kravitz’s eye, and he told Charles to give him a call if he ever wanted to develop the script into something more.
Two or three years later, Kravitz remembers Charles giving him a call. “Hey, Mr. Kravitz. You wanna do that script with me?”
The two completed the screenplay together, quickly discovering that they make a great writing team; Kravitz says their respective skills complement one another. “When we work together, we’re like puzzle pieces,” Kravitz says. “Where Chris is organized, I’m a little scattered. Where I’m thoughtful in other ways, Chris is focusing on something else.”
They continued to write on and off as a screenwriting team, while pursuing other creative outlets. Chris Charles runs the production company Throughline Films with co-founder John Bosher, while Danny Kravitz is an author and musician in addition to teaching screenwriting courses at Columbia. Although both men have separate projects, screenwriting has always been their first love. “It’s pure storytelling, but it’s supercharged,” Kravitz says. “It’s 90 minutes to two hours and it has to knock your socks off.”
Although their first screenplay together was never developed into a film, it opened the door for their next project, long before Neeson was attached.
Inspiration for the project that would become The Marksman came in 2009 from the headlines about events at the southern U.S. border with Mexico. At first, he couldn’t get Kravitz on board for the project. “It felt messy,” Kravitz recalls. But Charles was persistent, continuing to send his writing partner news clippings, documentaries and pages he’d written. It was when they started to develop their central characters that they realized they were onto something.
“Eventually, when we came up with the characters of Jim and Miguel, both of us fell in love with the story,” Charles says.
They worked on the script on and off over the next few years, but the central themes never changed — loss, redemption and empathy were always at the heart of Jim and Miguel’s journey. Producer Tai Duncan shared the writing duo’s vision and helped get The Marksman in front of Hollywood execs. The script eventually caught the eye of Robert Lorenz — a frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood, including on Gran Torino and Letters from Iwo Jima — who signed on to direct and co-write the script. For Charles and Kravitz, Lorenz’s contributions to the script only elevated what was already working.
“ It was like taking a master class in screenwriting,” Charles says.
Ryan Sweeney/Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment
Liam Neeson stars as Jim and Jacob Perez as Miguel in director Robert Lorenz’s "The Marksman," an Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment release.
Like all screenwriters, Charles and Kravitz had a shortlist of casting ideas, but they never expected one of their top choices to sign on to play Jim. Veteran actor Liam Neeson connected to both the script and the relationship between Jim and Miguel due to his own background as an immigrant (Neeson immigrated to the United States from Ballymena, Ireland). Neeson’s scene partner throughout the film is 10-year-old newcomer Jacob Perez, who triumphantly shares the spotlight as Miguel.
Charles and Kravitz hope Jim and Miguel’s story leave audiences feeling good.
“ It’s complicated in some ways because the world is a mess,” Kravitz says. “But it’s also a beacon of normalcy and hope.”
Charles and his wife left Chicago a few years ago to be closer to family in Madison, but Kravitz says living in separate cities has had little effect on their writing process. “We prefer to work in separate rooms, so we’re just used to doing everything over the phone,” Kravitz says.
The duo is working on a third project, a subversive mystery/thriller with a father/son relationship at its center that touches on similar themes to The Marksman. And a sequel to The Marksman is never off the table.
For now, both are looking forward to the video on demand release, which the two see as a second premiere. “Ultimately I think this is the perfect time for a film like this to be released,” Charles says. “I hope they come out of it thinking ‘you can get so much more out of life helping others in need.’”
