The production team rigged an enormous woodland set, which was safely set ablaze. Real firefighters stayed on set to carefully contain the inferno, Angelina Jolie met with several of them for insight into the perilous world of smoke jumping.
Taylor Sheridan was initially brought on to rewrite the script, but when another filmmaker dropped out of directing the film, he called the studio with an offer. "If I can get Angie to do this with me, I'll direct it for you," he said. The studio said, "Great. You'll never get Angie."
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Angelina Jolie spoke about going back to acting after years of directing behind the camera: "I love directing, but I had a change in my family situation that's not made it possible for me to direct for a few years. I needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so I kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs. That's really the truth of it."
Angelina Jolie on working with writer/director Taylor Sheridan: "He has a unique voice when it comes to characters within America, which had not been a prior focus of my work," Jolie says. "I wanted to be in this world with him."