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This is later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear weekday

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Afternoons on the Drive, and he
do it again. Frank Dolger, six

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time Emmy Award winning showrunner whose credits
include Game of Thrones, John Adams and

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Rome, is now adapting Frank Shatzing's
nine hundred page novel The Swarm to an

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eight page ego thriller. Frank is
joining us now to talk about The Swarm.

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Frank, this must have been a
daunting task because I read the book

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and there's a lot of science that
you're going to have to explain. Well,

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when I first read the book,
and I'm not a scientist, I

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was hopelessly lost. I have to
admit. I called interview friends who explained

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everything to me, and I realized
for my own reading that I had to

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make sure to somehow boil it all
down to things that were understandable and also

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the minimum of what we need did
the audience understand. The other thing we

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did, which I'm hoping helped,
was in the novel. As you know,

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most of the main characters world class
scientists. They're older, they've been

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around, and so we've lowered the
age We've made a lot of the scientists

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graduate students studying the scientists, so
there's a lot of stuff that they don't

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know they're learning, and they could
explain it to each other, and makes

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it easier for them to explain it
to the audience as well. Yeah,

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kind of take the audience along for
the ride. Let's talk about the central

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plot here, and this is something
that is hitting home because we're all thinking

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about green energy and what we need
to do to preserve our planet very much.

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So you know, when I was
growing up and there was a conversation

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about the toll that we were all
taking on the planet, we all companied

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ourselves by thinking, Okay, we're
doing a lot of damage to the planets.

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The oceans are so vast, there's
no way that we can pollute those,

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and we can destroy those. And
unfortunately that's no longer true, and

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I think scientists have realized we're actually
on the brink of killing the oceans.

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And one of our characters says very
simply towards the end of the series that

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if the oceans die, we die. And that's what the drama really is

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about, and what we explore is
how we've done that and maybe hoping it's

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not too late, and how we
can reverse course and maybe save the oceans.

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Frank Dolger is with us, and
he is you know him from Game

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of Thrones, but he's got a
new CW eight part series, The Swarm,

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which is on the CW. A
lot of this does take place beneath

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the oceans. When you were shooting
this, did you use real water?

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Are you employing some computer generated water? You know, shooting on the water

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is one of the most difficult things, primarily because of the safety issues involved.

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As difficult as it is because of
lighting and the movement, you always

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have to secure the actors and obviously
the crew. So we most productions follow

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this rule of anything that's safe you
try to do on the real water.

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Anything that could possibly endanger the actors
or the crew underwater you either do in

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a tank or you do computer generated
effects. Unfortunately, in the years since

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I've been doing this, things that
were very tough to do on Game of

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Thrones ten years ago have become much
easier and much more effective. But again

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it takes at least twice as long. And yeah, it's a key part

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of the story, and so we
used all three big tank lots of stuff

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on the water and then wherever we
can get away with it, some computer

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generated effects as well as a diver. I do some underwater video and I've

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the first thing I've learned is light
is very difficult at certain depths. So

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yeah, usually you have to shoot
things if you want them well lit,

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You're gonna have to shoot them in
pretty shallow water. You know you do.

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And also we take a little bit
of a dramatic license. I think

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most people will buy the convention that
if you're a little bit deeper and you

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need to see things, we try
to filter the sunlight. We try to

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give the a sense of light and
shadow. But you know, the reality

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was unless you have spotlights back that
you're not going to see anything. So

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we do have scenes and we have
SUBMERSI about vehicles, and we try to

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keep that as realistic as possible.
When we need to suspend the leaf a

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little bit, we try to suggest
a little bit enough light filtering from above,

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because you're right, you get to
a certain depth and it's really dark,

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you can't see anything. Frank Dolger's
with us, so you know him

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from Game of Thrones, John Adams
Rome and more. His newest creation is

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an adaptation of the novel The Swarm
into an eight part eco thriller, and

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it's available on the CW the The
the villain here is, and without giving

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too much away, the villain here
is, we're led to believe it's it's

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a monster, but it's a different
kind of monster. It's definitely a different

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kind of monster. And I think
that one of the things the audience will

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discover that actually the monster in the
piece is us. That the supposed monster

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isn't quite what you think it's going
to be. And also he's acting.

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It's acting out of self defense,
so you know, it's very much how

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do you feel about a killer who
is killing to save the people he loves

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as compared to someone who is endangering
that creature itself. So it's a little

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bit of a twist on a monster
movie and that's a little bit of the

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fun of it is when our characters
in our audience will discover the monster is

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not at all what they're expecting,
and the alien life form is not extraterrestrial.

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I would say it's intra terrestrial.
Yeah, if that's a word,

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it definitely is. Our expanding English
language Frank Olger's with us. You know

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him from Game of Thrones. Of
the Swarm available on the CW and eight

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part Eco Thriller. Had you read
this book long ago and just were aching

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to make a film about it?
Or did somebody bring it to your attention?

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It was brought to my attention.
I had heard about the novel.

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Again. It seemed intriguing. I
knew had been a big success and had

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a devoted readership. But again,
science was not my strong suit. So

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actually I never read it, and
actually I read it twice. I read

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it the first time and I told
the people who had brought it to me

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that it wasn't for me. I
didn't really think there was a series there.

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And then something about it stayed with
me, and I went back and

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took another look. And I think
again, when I figured out the genre,

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I think the novel it's pretty much
a disaster movie. For those people

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have read it, it's quite a
different lot of genres, but it ends

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up being very much a disaster movie. And I thought that wasn't interesting.

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And as I said, when I
figured out, maybe the thing to do

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was to make a monster movie,
you know, and my inspiration was partly

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Jaws partly the HBO series Chernobyl,
taking elements of scary movies. When there's

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something out there threatening, what is
it? What are you going to do

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about it? I sort of thought
maybe that was the way in so I

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finally decided to jump into it.
And the other thing about it was when

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it was written, you know,
twenty twenty five years ago, the cas

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weren't particularly diverse, particularly interesting,
and so we tried to bring them into

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the present. What I wasn't expecting
is some of the things that were seemed

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fantasy, like twenty years ago,
Wales attacking ships, you know, pathogen

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killing people, other seaborne disasters.
Suddenly they're no longer fantasy. Unfortunately,

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they've called up with us and the
things that we're all experiencing now. Yeah,

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a lot can change technologically in twenty
years, very much so. Yeah.

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Frank Olger, the name of the
series is The Swarm. It's an

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eight part eco thriller available on the
CW. You know him from Game of

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Thrones. Frank Olger, thank you
for bringing us the story and joining us

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today. Thank you very much and
I hope you all enjoy it. Thanks

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for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast and remember to

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listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation