Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, and director Doug Liman on the set of Jumper Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

So she's flying from L.A. to Cairo?
Or then on to Rome. She holds the record for the shortest amount of time from my waking up to rolling camera. There's this scene where she's flying back from Rome. It's like ten seconds in the movie. To get an airplane that looks like a transatlantic airplane is extraordinarily expensive. We couldn't spend that kind of money for ten seconds. So I had this idea where I'd fly to Rome with Rachel, and I would shoot the scene on the airplane. This was post-911 — there might be an air marshal, God knows what's going to happen. It was an overnight flight. We were seated next to each other in first class. I first shot it shortly after we took off, but it was a little dark in the plane. Obviously I didn't have any lighting equipment with me. I thought we should wait for morning and do it again before we landed. So I was like, "I'm going to go to sleep and then I'll wake up for breakfast and then I'll shoot the scene." I tend to sleep really well on airplanes, so I actually woke up to the captain saying, "Fasten your seat belts, we're getting ready to land." I'd slept through breakfast. And I just grabbed the camera and ran into the aisle — Rachel was up — and I was like, "OK, I'm going to roll in a couple of seconds." Because they were literally going to make me sit down not because I was shooting a movie, but because the airplane was landing.

They probably thought, Oh, it's just some idiot with a video camera.
Yeah, I'd kind of given the impression to the flight attendants that we were on some kind of honeymoon.

Will there be a sequel?
I'm not somebody who ever thought he would do a sequel, because I've never repeated the same genre. But I had such an amazing time working with Hayden and Rachel and Jamie. And I had so much fun envisioning where this world could go. This is based on a series of books and the second one has an amazing twist that would fundamentally change what the sequel would be about. It's so dramatic that for me it would be a fresh enough approach to the material that I could do a sequel without feeling like I was repeating myself. We'll see. No one really likes to talk sequel before a film comes out because it's bad luck or bad form.

So Hayden bears no ill will for all of the abuse he took (including a hyper-dilated pupil that required hospitalization)?
Hayden, more than any other actor I've ever worked with, is the hardest working. He is literally the first guy to pick up a piece of gear for a crew member. He has a value system — when I was casting for the movie, this was a go movie, I was a popular director, so all of these actors were coming in, and I'm like, "What else are you working on?" And they're trying to impress me with all the interest in them by other directors. And Hayden came in to meet and I said, "What else do you have on your plate?" And he said, "Well, I just rented a Bobcat, and I was going to spend the summer landscaping my parents' backyard." "No movies?" "No, I thought I'd do that." I was like, "You're not going to say anything here to impress me or make me feel like I've got to act right now?" "Nope. Take your time. I'd really like to work with you. I'll be in my parents' backyard. If I don't answer the phone it's because I can't hear it over the Bobcat."