Emmy winner Jeff Wolfe’s zombie movie ‘Outbreak’ arrives after years of dreaming of directing, with the first-time filmmaker personally putting up flyers around Santa Monica to drum up interest: “I have to do everything I can.”

Jeff Wolfe on the set of ‘Outbreak’ Don Holtz

He has beaten up Ryan Reynolds, and been beaten to a pulp by Ryan Gosling. He’s tussled with guys like Dwayne Johnson, Jet Li, Jean Claude-Van Damme and Jackie Chan.

Now, after decades of working in the world of stunts on movies like Green Lantern, Drive and Punisher: War Zone, Jeff Wolfe has fulfilled a longtime dream of directing his own movie, with the zombie drama Outbreak arriving in a handful of theaters Friday.

The film stars Billy Burke as a park ranger grieving his missing teenage son when a mysterious outbreak threatens his small community. It’s a zombie movie, but not what audiences may expect from the genre. There’s action and scares, but also human melancholy and a deep mystery.

Wolfe has a lot riding on Outbreak, which is one reason he spent last week putting up fliers around Santa Monica near the Laemmle Monica Film Center, one of five theaters showing the movie nationwide. “If you’re going to swing for the fences, you don’t stop at 90 percent,” says Wolfe. “I have to do everything I can.”

He financed about half of the project with his wife, Outbreak producer Jennifer Wolfe, and raised the rest from friends and other contacts. He says the feature cost “well under $1 million,” but it looks far more expensive thanks to Wolfe calling in every favor he could.

He knows Outbreak is his one shot of making a movie that way.

“You don’t want to be that guy who’s asking, ‘OK, I’m doing another one! So I need you to do this for free or cheap,’” says Wolfe, who serves as president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures.

For Outbreak, many of his pals were indeed happy to pitch in, not just to help Wolfe out, but because there wasn’t much else going on. The film shot under a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement for 19 days around Los Angeles during last year’s labor strikes.

This lull in the industry helped Wolfe land folks such as Eddie Yang, who sculpted the original Iron Man suit in the 2008 film and who designed Catwoman’s mask in The Dark Knight Rises; Bart Mixon, the makeup department head known for Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Endgame; as well as YANNIX, the VFX house that worked on Deadpool & Wolverine and Twisters.

Billy Burke and Jeff Wolfe on the set of ‘Outbreak’ Don Holtz

The filmmaker arrived in Los Angeles in the early ‘90s, offering to teach jujitsu at a martial arts school in exchange for a place to crash.

He landed a role in Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite (1996), and a few years later he was tussling with Johnson as the double for Steven Brand’s antagonist in Scorpion King (2000).

“Being six foot, three, I didn’t usually double actors. I usually played bad guys — and then got beat up as a stunt actor,” says Wolfe, who saw himself as an actor who also could do stunts, rather than just a straight stuntman.

In 2010, Wolfe shot the scene he is most recognized for. It was a memorable elevator fight with Gosling in Drive — a role that required him to get a mold of his head, so that Gosling could kick it in. (He once was out with a famous rock star friend, and while a bystander recognized Wolfe from Drive, the musician went unnoticed, something that amused both of them.)

The same year he made Drive, Wolfe also suffered one of the worst injuries of his career on the set of Green Lantern, where he played Bob Banks, an antagonist to Reynolds’ Hal Jordan.

During a scene in which Bob Banks and his friends ambush Hal Jordan, the burgeoning superhero uses his Green Lantern ring to manifest a giant fist, which knocks his foes into various vehicles. Wolfe was propelled 25 feet into the back of a truck, using a wire. They did the stunt twice. So far, so good. At midnight, the team took a meal break. When they returned, Wolfe was asked to grab an easy pickup shot, requiring him to jump over the cab of the truck and into its bed.

No problem, right? Well, not quite. Nobody noticed it had rained during the meal break, and when Wolfe jumped, he slipped — and slammed into the back of the truck.

“I sat up, and my shoulder was down about six inches lower than it should have been,” says Wolfe. “It’s a painful sequence even today to watch.”

A few years later, Wolfe caught the directing bug on Revolution, the 2012 show from JJ Abrams and The Boys creator Erik Kripke. He was promoted to second unit director during production on the pilot, which starred his future Outbreak leading man Burke and was directed by Jon Favreau.

Wolfe designed a big sequence near the end, and Favreau encouraged him to direct the sequence himself. Emboldened, Wolfe later put his hat in the ring to direct an episode. Producer Warner Bros. agreed, but the show was canceled before he got the chance. (Wolfe won an Emmy for stunt coordinating Revolution.)

“From that point, it’s been like, ‘OK, I can do this. But where does the money come from? Where does the script come from?’ That was the conundrum was for about eight years,” says Wolfe.

Ultimately, he and his wife decided to finance their own movie, landing on Outbreak, which Wolfe wrote with Erik Aude and Lance Ochsner. The Wolfes produced it via the WolfePride Productions with Kevin Matossian.

When it came time to make Outbreak, he called on trusted collaborators, including actor Ray Stevenson, who agreed to act in the project.

The pair bonded when Wolfe served as Stevenson’s double on Punisher: War Zone (2008). Stevenson told him, “You and I are both the Punisher. I am the voice, and you are the body,” recalls Wolfe, who also doubled for him on projects such as The Book of Eli.

Stevenson ultimately never acted in Outbreak, as he landed a role in the feature Cassino in Ischia and had to bow out. Then, Stevenson died unexpectedly in May 2023 after an illness early in Cassino‘s production.

Wolfe still keeps a poster of the larger-than-life Stevenson in War Zone in his office, and points to the character, saying, “I feel like he’s got him watching over me. He’s always around.”

With Outbreak hitting theaters and VOD from Vertical Entertainment, Wolfe plans on flying to Atlanta to promote the film there, too. He hopes word of mouth will help it expand into more theaters, and stresses that while it’s nice for folks to check it out at home, showing up to watching it in person is even better. (See a list of theaters here.)

He now hopes Outbreak can propel him to securing studio financing on his next movie, following in the footsteps of stuntmen-turned-directors like John Wick’s Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, Extraction’s Sam Hargrave, and Killer’s Game JJ Perry.

Says Wolfe: “Maybe I can broaden the scope of what creatives and studios think we can do.”