THE TERMINAL LIST Directors Antoine Fuqua, Jack Carr and Dave DiGilio bring this story to life (exclusive)

With The list of terminals now streaming exclusively on Prime Video, we recently caught up with director Antoine Fuqua (training day; The equalizer), author Jack Carr and screenwriter Dave DiGilio about the action-thriller series starring fan-favorite Chris Pratt (jurassic world; guardians of the galaxy) in the lead role of James Reece.

When our time was short, Fuqua revealed what convinced him to direct the series while Carr and DiGilio explained why a TV series was the best way to adapt this thrilling story.

Check out the full video interview below!

ROHAN: Antoine, you have done a lot of military projects – Shooter, The equalizer, The sun’s Teardrops – what sparked your interest in this story?

ANTONY: Well, Jack’s writing, really, I read the book, and I was excited about Reece’s journey. Then we met Dave, and he came on board, and he had a psychological bent, which is important to me, the whole homecoming side, and the military people who serve, the men and women who serve. So, I got excited about handling this in a different way. The homecoming part, where you are confused as to what might have happened on your last mission. So, I got excited about it. And that was my path.

ROHAN: Jack, it was really your baby, what were you looking for when you were looking for people to adapt your material?

JACK: Yeah, well, I knew exactly who I wanted to adapt it to as soon as I started typing this, while I was still in the Navy, and no one had ever heard of me before, and it was Antoine, who was directing and bringing it to life and it was starring Chris Pratt. So it was very natural for me to think in those terms, it was very natural, as a kid in the 80s, to think of this as a movie eventually, and then while I was writing things started changing on TV and in movies, and you got to see these big stories brought to TV that ran for eight to ten episodes.

And so I thought this story really lends itself to that kind of medium to tell that story, to develop the characters, to bring the action on the big screen to that, and then to add that psychological twist that Dave threw in and to which thought of, and we all loved, and really sets it apart from other shows out there.

ROHAN: Dave, what were the conversations like when you decided if this book should become a show or a movie?

DAVID: Thank you for this question. Whenever you’re fitting a good piece of hardware, there are certain things you need to take into consideration. The book is very much in James Reece’s point of view. We realized early on that if we did a straight adaptation we would literally kill Chris Pratt, no actor could do that much work. So we knew we had to have other point-of-view characters that could carry B, C, and D stories and then we knew he was saying this, you’ve got Chris Pratt, and so we knew those people had to be as compelling on screen as Chris.

We were very lucky to have a movie star level cast in this set and then really the story at its essence is about compulsion. Right? Reece is constrained by what happened to him on his way. So we knew those other characters had to have a similar level of constraint. Thus, Katie is driven by truth and accountability. We have this incredible character that we present to you Agent Tony Layun, played by JD Pardo, driven by justice. What is justice in his mind? So we had the ability, through these awesome actors, to provide some amazing layers to the overall story while still honoring what made the book great.

Based on Jack Carr’s bestselling novel, The Terminal List follows James Reece (Chris Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs are ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his guilt. However, as new evidence emerges, Reece discovers that dark forces are working against him, endangering not only his life, but those he loves.