Kathryn Bigelow's amazing combat pic The Hurt Locker arrives in cinemas this week.

If you haven't seen it, we can't recommend it highly enough - it's taught, emotional, destructive and tough.

But given its explosive subject matter, the film has taken a rocky road through development. Here's how it made it from the words of journalist Mark Boal to the screen...

1. The war away from home

The Hurt Locker got its start with Mark Boal, freelance journalist and source/co-writer for Paul Haggis' Iraq-afflicted drama In The Valley Of Elah.

His experience on the ground with bomb-disposal teams led to plenty of material that he could pour into a script: "I was an embedded reporter in Iraq and I came back from having spent some time with the bomb squad and watching them disarm bombs in the heat of combat."

And he explains exactly what it was that drove him to start figuring out how to turn his experiences into his next screenplay.

"I was really struck by the personalities that I met over there. I just really wanted to tell a character story that took you past the headlines of what it means to be a hero, to look at somebody who has a lot of courage and bravado and pays a price for that.

"That was really the starting point – starting from character more than any particular plot line. Then it became about marrying that character, or those different characters, with a through line."

He also wanted to stay away from the now-typically bombastic war movies the we've traditionally seen.

“I don’t think any of it was Hollywood-inspired. It was inspired by real life.

"It’s a composite of different people that I met. My source material was the reporting that I’ve done. I didn’t have a bunch of cinematic references.”

All he needed now was a collaborator...

Next: Cinematic potential