Newcastle director Neil Marshall endured freezing conditions to bring his film about the Romans and the Picts to the screen. He tells Steve Pratt how Hadrian’s Wall inspired the story and why he doesn’t spare the blood and guts.

HADRIAN’S WALL has figured a lot in Neil Marshall’s life. He was born and grew up in Newcastle, at one end of the wall, and then, for several years, worked in Carlisle, at the other end. “I commuted along the route of Hadrian’s Wall and used to spend a lot of time driving along the old Roman road – and you get a lot of inspiration on dark and stormy days,” he says.

“I wondered what was up there that was so scary for the Romans to build such a big, long wall. That’s a pretty drastic measure. That raised my curiosity levels and then I heard about the myth of the Ninth Legion.”

This is the tale of an army of Roman soldiers who marched into Scotland and just vanished into the mist, never to be seen again. Researching the historical facts, he formed his own theory about what might have happened – and wrote his latest movie, Centurion.

Marshall began making films with his mum’s Super 8 camera, at home in Newcastle, at the age of 11, going on to film school at Newcastle Polytechnic and then working as a freelance editor in his home city before making his directorial debut on the werewolf horror movie, Dog Soldiers.

He followed that with The Descent, in which a group of female potholers are attacked by cave-dwelling cannibalistic creatures, and the apocalyptic science fiction horror film, Doomsday.

Hadrian’s Wall got a mention in that, too.

In Centurion, it’s still being built as the survivors of the Ninth Legion flee from the savage Picts, running for their lives from the snowy Scottish Highlands to the safety of the wall.

Michael Fassbender, acclaimed for his portrayal of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands in the film Hunger, leads a cast that also includes The Wire star Dominic West, David Morrissey, Noel Clarke and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, as a particularly violent Pict.

As he has in the past, Marshall makes a relatively small budget go a long way and the Scottish Highlands make a stunning backdrop for the blood and guts action. Scotland is one of the writer-director’s favourite places to film, although conditions, including snow and below freezing temperatures, were uncomfortable for the crew and actors.

“We were filming in the middle of February in the Cairngorms and it was positively Arctic,”

he remembers.

“The first day we were 3,000ft up a mountain, it was minus 18 and the poor cast had to dig their way into a snowdrift in a blizzard. I wanted to punish my cast to get that feel and look.”

The actors were willing to go the extra mile for him. In the first scene, Fassbender is seen, shirtless, running and stumbling through the snow pursued by the Picts. When Marshal says the actor is “very dedicated” he means it – Fassbender wanted to perform a leap from cliffs into a river that the Roman soldiers make to elude capture. He wasn’t allowed to do it.

“He was begging to do the cliff jump, but that was a little bit too dangerous,” says Marshall.

“There was one day when it was raining all day and everyone on the crew got completely soaked but, on the whole, I absolutely loved it.

I got a kick out of the weather conditions.”

Many will want to mention Centurion in the same breath as Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Gladiator, although Marshall’s budget couldn’t be more different, just £7m – “probably the size of Gladiator’s catering budget”.

“The only thing we have in common with Gladiator is Romans. My film is more akin to a western. They’re people on the run from the posse, like in an old John Ford western. The Romans are the cowboys, the Picts are the Apaches and the Scottish Highlands stand in for Death Valley.”

His cast is higher profile than in his previous movies, although Olga Kurylenko, who starred opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Quantum Of Solace, not only had to act without any dialogue – her character has had her tongue cut out – but fight and kill without remorse as a woman avenging the murder of her family.

“It’s a challenge for any actor where they’re deprived of speech. She can only express herself through action and violence, but that’s the nature of her character.”

IN one scene, her character hacks off the head of a Roman soldier. As in previous Marshall films, the blood and gore level is high, with limbs hacked off, axes embedded in heads and bodies slashed with swords.

“I wanted it to be fairly honest in its brutality.

Those were not pleasant times. I wanted to tell that as a more matter of fact thing which, unfortunately, means lots of blood and guts,”

he says.

Centurion also offered him the chance to have a crack at another cinematic genre, a sword-and-sandals movie, but he can recognise links with his past work. “I wanted to do a historical outdoor adventure.

But certain elements do continue the trend of my previous films – action orientated and a strong group of characters, so I suppose it conforms from that point of view. But it’s not a horror movie, it’s a fantasy movie.”

If somebody calls it a “typical Neil Marshall movie” – and they have – he’ll take it as a compliment.

“I will do something without blood one day,” he adds, although he doesn’t have a romantic comedy waiting to go before the cameras.

He’s working on a film version of the Bodie and Doyle TV series The Professionals, but his next film will be a 3D horror piece called Burst, the very name of which conjures up all sort of bloody horrors. Exploding people, anyone?

“That’s definitely going to have blood and guts in it,” he says, somewhat unnecessarily.

■ Centurion (15) opens in cinemas on Friday.