Michael Mann's Blackhat - timely tale of hacking

Wang Leehom discovered an unexpected benefit to having a world-class computer hacker on his team while filming cyber-thriller Blackhat. A Mando-pop singing idol as well as an actor, he had been the recipient of a stalker's unwanted attention. "This person knew what flight I was on, even if it was a private schedule, and I booked the flight the night before. She knew my seat number, and booked the seat next to me. It happened on every trip," Wang says.

Soon after Wang mentioned his problem to Blackhat's "hacking consultant", Christopher McKinlay, "I had this person's passport information, her address and everything. We hacked the hacker," Wang says. "Let's just say I'm not being stalked any more. Not by her, anyway."

Computer hacking can be more than an inconvenience. At its most threatening, it's a form of terrorism that can shut down stock markets, cause power plants to explode and bring governments to their knees. Blackhat is being released at a time when cyber crimes are in the news in the wake of the Sony hacking scandal.

Director-producer-writer Michael Mann says he began developing the idea for this film a few years ago, after reading about Stuxnet, a computer worm that attacks industrial programs - including those that control factory assembly lines, amusement park rides and nuclear centrifuges. "As a piece of malware, it was the first digital weapon," the filmmaker says. "It was a stealth drone. It would hit, and it would have an effect that the target didn't know about for 18 months. If it was discovered, it destroyed whatever discovered it."

In the story - which Mann conceived and co-scripted with first-time screenwriter Morgan Davis Foehl - a nuclear power plant in Hong Kong is attacked by malware, causing a near meltdown.