‘Exterritorial’ Director On The Netflix Movie’s Global Success & His Next Challenge: A Showjumping Drama

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EXCLUSIVE: Christian Zübert, the writer and director of hit Netflix film Exterritorial couldn’t believe it when his German action thriller scaled the streamer’s film charts. “I said to my wife, I hope we don’t have a moment like La La Land in 2017 because I was thinking: ‘It’s quite unbelievable,’” he says.

“I was really happy with the movie, it turned out the way I wanted, a mix of a really emotional story and a genre story. I thought, maybe we’ll get number one in Germany and in some other countries, and hopefully we won’t do too badly in the big markets, like the U.S. and Britain.”

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Exterritorial actually sat atop the Netflix film charts in 88 countries including the U.S. and UK. It was the most-watched film in the streamer’s non-English language charts for three weeks. Having scaled the heights, the Constantin Film-produced movie is now fifth most-watched non-English language film ever on Netflix with over 85M views and is closing in on fourth spot.

“You start to realize, and I don’t say this to brag but more because Netflix has got such a huge reach, maybe at that moment, this was the most seen movie in the world,” Zübert says.

The story follows former elite soldier Sara Wulf, played by Jeanne Goursaud (Barbarians), whose child mysteriously disappears in the labyrinthine U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, Germany. Forced to go into battle mode after the authorities deny her son was ever there, her search for her missing child unravels a cover-up that dates back to her time in Afghanistan.

Zübert recalls the idea for the show came while he was working on hit German series Bad Banks. He was in the U.S. consulate trying to get visas for his family. He didn’t lose any offspring and embark upon a two-hour carnage-filled mission to get them back, per the film, but the idea was born.

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Netflix’s German-language programming boss Sasha Bühler greenlit the movie. “We said maybe we can try to do this emotional take on Die Hard set in a consulate,” Zübert says.

The action elements wedded to the emotional pull of a missing child is the film’s secret sauce, the writer-director adds. “You have this framing of the Die Hard-type movie, but there’s also this mother looking for a child, and who has to overcome her own self-doubts. Those two elements were really important for me. If you had just taken one element, it probably wouldn’t have had the same impact, people would have said: ‘I’ve seen this a million times.’”

Casting: Dougray Scott’s German American Challenge

The director had seen numerous actors but until he saw Goursaud had not found one who could inhabit the role of Sara Wulf, a mother and ex-soldier haunted by memories of her time in Afghanistan. “That was the first time that I really could see and feel the role. She’s not a trained fighter but she was able to work out [the character] and also get the moves. For me, from the beginning, I wanted her to do everything. I didn’t want to use any stunt doubles.”

Dougray Scott In 'Exterritorial'

Goursaud is in a cat and mouse game with Dougray Scott’s head of consulate security Erik Kynch.

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“His brain must be really f***ed up, because he’s Scottish and he had to play an American with an American accent but who can also speak German, but with an American accent,” Zübert says. “He worked really, really hard, and that was besides the fight training. On set [in Vienna, Austria], he was always saying: ‘Please speak German to me.’”.

The movie’s success is a fillip for the German business and other writers and directors. “We don’t have the budget of Hollywood, I wouldn’t have had the money to let the whole consulate explode,” Zübert says. “We cannot rely on the budget and the big spectacle; we have to use the narrative and the emotional angles to make something special.”

From Embassies To Equestrian

Christian Zubert, writer and director of 'Exterritorial'

Zübert is in Bratislava, Slovakia, when he talks to Deadline and prepping for a TV drama set within the world of showjumping. It has the working title Nordhof and comes from German novelist Julie Zeh. The series is for German public broadcaster ZDF.

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“It showcases the whole world of those really expensive horses which are sold to billionaires,” Zübert explains. “It was written by a famous German novelist called Juliet Zeh and this is her first series. She knows the scene really well. There have been movies about horse racing, but I haven’t seen [a project] like this where you really see this world of show jumping [represented] so visually and in such an exciting and new way.”

Showjumping aside, wasn’t the temptation to return to the Exterritorial universe, after all, the industry loves a sequel?

“I always like to do something new and challenge myself in a new way. I wouldn’t say no, but I would say we would have to have a really good idea for that first. I wouldn’t just do it just for the heck of it, or just because the first one was successful.”

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