AN appeal in The Northern Echo helped launch the film-making career of Bharat Nalluri 30 years ago, he tells Steve Pratt. Now he’s directing the big screen version of TV hit Spooks

On the streets of London the cameras were rolling on the film of TV hit Spooks with leading man Kit Harington in the thick of the action. Suddenly director Bharat Nalluri shouted “Cut!” to halt filming. Something in the background of the shot is worrying him – a bus going past with a giant poster on its side bearing the unmistakable face of Game Of Thrones star Harington.

Seeing the image on screen would have ruined the credibility of his Spooks character, former counter-terrorism agent Will Holloway. The poster was plugging cinema epic Pompeii in which Harington dodges an erupting volcano in a drama directed by Paul W S Anderson, one of Nalluri’s best friends growing up in the North-East. “I rang up Paul and told him his movie was getting in the way of my movie,” jokes Nalluri.

The pair began making home movies together after meeting as pupils at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle. Anderson now lives in Hollywood with actress wife Mila Jovavich, directing films such as Resident Evil. Nalluri is also based in the US for the present, living in Washington where his wife is working. When not directing, his role is “daddy day care” to their children, aged three and six.

Nalluri works in TV and film on both sides of the Atlantic. Over here, he directed the first episodes of three big TV hits – Life On Mars, Hustle and Spooks. When Spooks ended after ten seasons, he returned to direct the final episode, so perhaps it was only natural for him to helm the big screen version.

“People have wanted to make a movie of it for some time, but the producers wanted the TV show to run its course. I think the BBC would have had it go on forever and ever but the producers and writers got together in 2011 and felt they had mined every single story out there. Now the world is shifting and the spy world has changed, so it was very easy to drop it into a movie,” he explains.

“The series had always been like a series of mini movies. The film was very easy to put together because Spooks is a global brand and a hit in so many countries around the world. I did the very first episode in 2002 and the very last in 2011 as a kind of ‘hello and goodbye’. But as I was walking out into the car park on the way out I thought, ‘there’s a good way to switch into a movie’.”

The story of Spooks: The Greater Good sees top operative and head of counter-terrorism Harry Pearce, played once again by Peter Firth, disgraced and forced to resign after a terrorist escapes from MI5 custody. Harington’s rogue agent is brought in to find Harry although, being Spooks, nothing is quite what it seems.

Nalluri’s experience directing feature films, including HBO’s acclaimed Tsunami, meant he was able to work on the larger scale with a bigger budget and stage the huge action pieces that cinema demands while remaining true to the spirit of the TV Spooks. “The whole core to the series is that it’s clever and doesn’t take its audience for fools. It’s very grey – there are no good guys, no bad guys. It’s quite a complex thriller,” he says.

Nalluri doesn’t think he’d have been interested in directing the film if Firth hadn’t been involved. “He has a huge fan base and without him we’d have been crucified,” he adds.

He knew of Harington through Game Of Thrones, of which Nalluri’s a big fan, and thought he had all the right elements for playing Will Holloway. “He had never seen Spooks – and I told him not to. It was a coincidence that Paul directed him in Pompeii. I did talk to Paul about Kit and he gave him a rave review. ”

Much of Nalluri’s work these days is directing American TV pilots. One recent one, The 100, is currently in its third series. He has another TV pilot, this one starring Wesley Snipes, due for screening this year. Depending how Spooks does at the cinema box office, there could be a follow-up movie. “It’s coming out in the US in July – which isn’t bad for a small British spy thriller set in London. We know that core fans absolutely love the film and that people really want more. We have ideas to arc it out into a trilogy,” he says.

In a way it’s all thanks to The Northern Echo for helping aspiring film-makers Nalluri and Anderson on their way nearly 30 years ago by publishing an appeal for people to appear in their new short film. “I’d like to say thank you for that,” says Nalluri.

Spooks: The Greater Good (15) opens in cinemas on Friday May 8