Murder Company follows a group of United States soldiers who are given orders to smuggle a member of the French resistance behind enemy lines during the midst of the D-Day invasion. The resistance member has plans to assassinate a high-value Nazi target, and the war movie centers on that very important mission.

Well known for 2023’s The Best Man starring Luke Wilson and Dolph Lundgren, which he wrote, directed, and produced, Shane Dax Taylor has made a name for himself as an action film director. Murder Company is his first time tackling a war film, something he says he has always wanted to do. Murder Company will be released in select theaters on July 5th, 2024.

Screen Rant spoke with Shane Dax Taylor about his family’s personal connection with World War II, and why that drew him to this particular war film. Shane discusses what it was like filming in Bulgaria, as well as working under a tight time crunch. He also talks about what it was like working with Kelsey Grammer, and the rest of the talented cast.

Shane Dax Taylor Has Personal Ties To World War II

When asked what drew him to Murder Company, director Shane Dax Taylor shares a Time Magazine cover from Normandy that features his grandfather. He has always wanted to do a war movie, but this one in particular felt like the perfect fit.

Shane Dax Taylor: I come from a military family. This was Normandy. This is my grandfather. This was a cover of Time Magazine. It’s on a bunch of magazines, so I grew up with this picture. And it’s always kind of been in the back of my head that I would have the opportunity to, one day, direct [a war movie]. I’ve been offered other ones, and this one just really just hit home. Everything kind of fell into place. And it was a fun one to make for sure.

Murder Company was filmed in Bulgaria. This was Shane’s first time there, so he did not know what to expect. What he discovered were top-notch crews and great food, but an unexpected challenge that ended up being the most difficult thing to navigate through while filming.

Shane Dax Taylor: The crews were phenomenal. Millennium Films, Expendables, and Olympus Has Fallen, all those, so crews were top-notch. And I will say the people were amazing. And the food was fantastic. It was just a great place to go. And I look forward to going back there for sure.

Which sequence was Shane most excited to shoot? You might be surprised.

Shane Dax Taylor: There’s one sequence where all these guys have individual fight scenes. And then there’s a scene which was fun, because everyone brought their own kind of style to the fights, but the big scenes when we had 300 people on set. We were shooting in a valley, and we had 50 to 60 people over here, we have 50 back here, and we had 100 over here, and it was converging at the same time, and we wanted it to feel like instead of using CGI, or anything, to feel like these guys are really holed up in this one spot. And are they going to make it out?

The biggest challenge when filming Murder Company was the language barrier. There were times that it cost them many shooting hours they didn’t think they could afford to lose.

Shane Dax Taylor: The main challenge was definitely the language barrier. We’d have days when we have 50 extras, and 75% of these guys didn’t speak any English. So me just saying, “Hey, walk from here to here.” It was the added challenge of the language and “Don’t look this way,” and “Look this way” and “Do this.” So it was definitely, there were a couple of hours – an hour, maybe two hours every day – that were added on just for the language barrier. Google Translate helps, but there were times we had no internet. So it’s easier if I just run out there and say, “Walk from here to here,” or “Trot from here to here,” or “Go behind these trees.”

How Shane Dax Taylor’s Past Action Films Helped Him On Murder Company

Shane Dax Taylor has worked on several action films in the past, and while a war movie is similar, it is also different. When asked about how his past projects have helped him, Shane reveals that it was learning to deal with the chaos.

Shane Dax Taylor: You know, great question. It was more just dealing with the chaos of the action sequences. I’ve done a lot, like a whole lot. I just finished another one a couple of weeks ago. But with that one, we had 150 actors / stuntman on set for two or three days. And 300 people total those days, and trying to control it. If this were my first film, forget it, I’d still be in tears, but having dealt with those action sequences and trusting our stunt coordinators and stuntmen and everything else was vital. Having done that it definitely helped for sure.

We had two stunt coordinators, and there were certain things they wanted to do. I was like, “Can we do that? You want to jump off a truck, set on fire, do this?” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah. We’ve done it before, and we can definitely do it.” We’re blowing people up into trees, people are tumbling down mountains. It was a lot. They definitely brought it and it made it that much more exciting and more real.

Working With Kelsey Grammer Was “A Dream”

Acting legend Kelsey Grammer stars in Murder Company. Shane Dax Taylor reveals that working with Kelsey on this project was a dream.

Shane Dax Taylor: It was a dream, it was one of the things that, the script came to me and he was already on board. So I was like, “Wow, that’s fantastic.” I’ve had so many buddies that have worked with him, whether it’s directors or other actors, and Pooch Hall and other guys, and they were talking about he shows up on set, and he’s talking to everybody, “Where are you from?,” all this.

He just wants to know everything about everybody, as opposed to beelining it to the trailer. He hung out and talked to people and wanted to hear their stories. My family owns a bourbon distillery, and he has a bourbon, and we just talked like two guys, as opposed to, “Okay, this is where I want your character to do this.”. It was really comforting. I definitely highly recommend any director that’s watching this, please work with him, because he’s amazing. And he makes everybody else better. He lifts everybody else up. And he’s prepared. I look forward to working with him again, for sure.

He also discusses working with the rest of the incredibly talented cast.

Shane Dax Taylor: Pooch Hall and Jilon VanOver. I’ve known those guys for 25 years. Jilon I’ve worked with a few times, but Pooch, one of my closest friends, and I wanted to bring these guys together. And Giles Marini, other than Kelsey, I hired every single actor, and I wanted to talk to him before and some didn’t work out, because I felt like, what can make this a brotherhood? What would make this important and bring these guys together? We were hanging out at the end of the day. We’d go have dinner together, or on weekends, we would go hiking or go grab drinks, and work out. So it was one of those things when on set, they wouldn’t run to their trailers, they would go hang out with the other guys.

That was important to me, because I’ve been on sets where there’s gonna be one toxic person, and then all of a sudden, it brings down the morale of everybody, but it was important to me to have everybody on the same page. I talked to him and [said] I want you to hang out with these guys, especially because I came in early. And so we would know each other. It helped that I knew a couple of these guys really well. And dinners helped, and trading stories. It was important to me for sure.

Murder Company’s Tight Shooting Schedule Is Not As Surprising As It Seems

Murder Company was shot in just twelve days – less than two weeks. Working with an incredibly tight schedule like this means that you need to go in with a plan and be prepared for anything. Shane explains how this is, unfortunately, becoming the norm when it comes to his projects.

Shane Dax Taylor: When I originally signed on, it was 14 days. Then they cut it to 13. And then I told him, “Look, we’re losing an hour, two hours, every day with a language barrier.” So instead of giving me an extra day, they said, “Well, we’re going to make it 12. And you can go into overtime on these other days.” So I was like, “Okay,” so we actually shot this in 12 days. I don’t know what world we’re living in. When I started, we were doing 25 days and my last three films I’ve done, I did a 15-day I did The Best Man with Luke Wilson was 10 days, and I just did a 12-day shoot. It’s ridiculous.

This film I just finished, I think they brought me on because they knew I could do it in 12 days. And not that I wanted to, I think it’s probably taking years off my life. I’m kidding, but the stress of trying to shoot all that in those days is.. they want bigger action set pieces, but yet, they want to give you less days. I think we had three days with 300 people on set in Murder Company and to try to do it in 12 days, that one sequence should have been two weeks, and we had two and a half days to shoot that. So that’s a lot of preparation.

Yeah, it helped that once we were halfway through, they told me they were cutting out a day. So I spent my Sunday, which should have been my off day, just rewriting, just trying to make these sequences a little more manageable, and then more shortlisting. Here’s what we’re going to do, and here’s how we’re going to do it because we’re kind of all over Bulgaria. It’s not these five guys in one room. We are on top of mountains and abandoned places that were an hour in each direction. We’re all over the place. But it looks like they’ve gone 100 miles.

What would Shane say to people who are looking for something to watch about Murder Company? Why should they make a point to see this film? Well, because it is important to bring people together.

Shane Dax Taylor: In the times we live in, I think it’s important that all these people are coming together. They have one goal. It’s like this pro-war, pro-America, we’re coming together for one enemy. And it can bring people together. I showed my father, I showed a bunch of his friends, these ex-military, and I brought him to tears. I think it’s just important that it should bring people together, as opposed to, with the politics in the world we live in, it’s like everyone has a side, and I think with a film like this, everyone should be on the same side and bring people together.

About Murder Company

During the D-Day invasion, a group of U.S. soldiers must smuggle a member of the French resistance behind enemy lines to assassinate a high-value Nazi target.

Check out our other interview with star William Moseley.