How's This for a Cliffhanger?

That poor henchman over there has a hammer stuck in his forehead.

- By Devin Gordon. Photographs by Devin Yalkin

The hammer is made of foam, wrapped in duct tape, and technically it's stuck to his head with Scotch tape, not in his head, but still. Tough break. His masked killer, dressed head to toe in black, ninja-style, yanks the hammer out of (off of) his skull, and he tumbles backward onto the mat. One henchman down, four to go.

Afternoon sunlight streams in through a stainedglass window high above the dojo floor of a converted cathedral on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, filling the space with the warm glow of fight-choreography heaven. Off to the side, observing and taking mental notes, are veteran stunt performer turned director David Leitch and his producer wife, Kelly McCormick. Two years ago, they converted this building-the headquarters of their production company, 87North-into an incubator for the kind of car-rolling, helicopter-dangling action movies that studios usually make on a computer nowadays. They train actors here, block out fights, and shoot and edit rough versions of complete sequences. It's a full-service action factory, all under one vaulted roof.

"It's probably the coolest production office I've ever been to," says Ryan Gosling, who spent an entire Christmas season here in 2022 training for 87North's latest movie, The Fall Guy, based extremely loosely on the '80s television series, with Gosling taking over for Lee Majors as a breezy blue-collar stuntman named Colt Seavers. Another actor who worships at the church of 87North is Bob Odenkirk, star of Better Call Saul, who spent two years training with Leitch, McCormick, and their team to transform his sketch-comic body into a hit man's for the company's revenge thriller Nobody, which became a surprise hit in 2021. "In fact," Odenkirk says, "I'm going to 87North twice this week to train, even though there's no movie in close proximity"