From ComingSoon.net:
"Day 2 of WonderCon 2010 featured presentations by two of Hollywood's biggest studios, Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros., the former having a lengthy chunk of time in the Esplanade Ballroom to present footage and talent from their three big summer movies.
One of the biggest highlights was the first non-trailer footage from Jerry Bruckheimer's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, directed by Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure), and we were thrilled to have a chance to talk to the director and to actor Nicolas Cage earlier in the day.
The movie, loosely based on the animated segment from Fantasia of the same name, has Cage playing an ancient sorcerer Balthazar Stone, who has been searching for years for someone called the Prime Merlinean, who will eventually play a huge role in the battle between good and evil sorcerers, known as the Merlineans and Morganians respectively.
The first clip Turteltaub brought to WonderCon was from very early in the movie when Dave first meets Balthazar. Turteltaub set up the clip saying that the 10-year-old Dave (played by Jake Cherry) has sent a note to this girl he likes named Becky, who is played by Teresa Palmer when they're grown up, essentially asking her to check whether he can either be her a.) friend or b.) boyfriend. She's made her choice but before Dave can look at it, the note has blown away.
The extended clip opens with Dave chasing the note onto a back alley that has loose papers flying everywhere, and he comes to a shop where outside is parked Balthazar's vintage Phantom car. Dave continues to follow the note until it slips into the mail slot of a strange shop, which is Balthazar's Arcana Cabana. Cautiously, Dave walks in and surveys the shelves that are filled with odd magical trinkets, before coming to a dusty Arabic lamp and he starts polishing off the dust but instead of a genie coming out, he accidentally bumps into something, which starts a chain of things falling over, including a large vase, which is quickly snatched up by Cage's Balthazar before it shatters. He says that the second emperor of the Han Dynasty put his least favorite wife in that urn for ten years to the day, and that if you open it up, the same thing will happen to whomever does it.
Young Dave apologizes and asks if he's seen the note that blew into his store, and Balthazar asks if that was just a coincidence which Dave confirms. Balthazar says something, calling Dave by name, and when the young boy asks how he knows his name, Cage yells 'Because I can read minds!!!' (pause) 'It's on your backpack.' (This got a big laugh.)
He pulls out a small box and says, 'This is very special and if it likes you, you can keep it.' Dave responds, 'I better not. My teacher said I can't be gone for long, she knows I'm here.' Balthazar says that Dave's a bad liar but that's good. (This is a comment that will be revisited in the second clip, so possibly a recurring gag.) He opens the tiny box and there's a small metallic dragon statue inside which Dave takes, and it comes to life and walks across his hand and forms itself into a ring around his finger. 'No way,' Dave says.
Balthazar goes into a version of the speech we hear as voice-over during the trailer, 'I have been searching for a very long time, my child. This means something, that you're going to be a very important sorcerer one day, and your first lesson is right now with your very own encantus.' (Whatever that might be.)
'Don't move, do not touch anything,' Balthazar warns as he runs down a spiral staircase to the basement. It was hard to figure out exactly what happens next, but basically, Dave doesn't listen, and when he waves the hand with the dragon ring, a force hits the wall smashing it, the wall shatters and out falls a Grimhold, what looks like a Russian porcelain doll with an image of a man in a suit and a bowler hat. When it hits the ground, we see the scene from the new trailer as cockroaches start to emerge from the cracks in the Grimhold and they start to converge and morph into the form of Max Horvath, Alfred Molina's character and the main villain of the piece. He asks Dave where he is, and misunderstanding, the boy says he's in New York City and Horvath angrily corrects him, 'Not where... the year.' Horvath advances with his cane raised, handle glowing a bright blue with power.
At that point, Balthazar returns and asks, 'What happened to 'don't touch anything''? Horvath says something to which Balthazar tells him to be quiet and tells Dave 'he's been like this for a thousand years.' He asks where the other Grimhold is and we see that another one has been released by Dave's carelessness. It has a woman's image on it, which we can assume is either Monica Bellucci's character--who we still haven't seen in any of the trailers--or it could also be the Grimhold containing Morgana le Fey, the greatest sorceress in history, something that will play a large part in the movie in terms of the balance between good and evil magicians.
Horvath uses his powers to grab a sword and lunges it at Balthazar, who uses his own powers to grab a large African mask that just stops the sword from going through his face. This leads to a sword fight of sorts with Balthazar holding his own sword and Horvath's floating in the air. During much of this sequence, it was fairly obvious that Turteltaub had been using music from Pirates of the Caribbean as temp track in the background, but that became really obvious during the sword fight.
The two continue to struggle, and then Balthazar forms a ball of plasma and blasts Horvath with it, who seemingly catches it midair, then creates his own ball of flame and proceeds to set the shop on fire, as he advances on Dave. Then Balthazar jumps out of the fire from behind Horvath and pulls him back and they're both dragged into the sand-filled urn he mentioned in the beginning pulling the two men into it for ten years. His last words to Dave are, 'In ten years, I'll find you!' to which Horvath adds, 'So will I!'
Essentially, this opening scene is almost a prologue that sets up the relationships via an encounter Dave has with Balthazar and Horvath years earlier than the modern-day story, one he might have even forgot about before Dave runs into Balthazar again, while he's attending NYU. It was a surprisingly long clip that immediately established the humor of the movie, as well as the level of action both physical and magical, since we already know this is going to be movie that's heavy on CG special FX.
The second scene is in fact ten years later, presumably after Balthazar has reunited with Dave and gave him his pitch to make him into a great sorcerer, with Horvath already trying to stop this from happening. He's also gotten his own apprentice, named Drake Stone and played by Toby Kebbell, a sorcerer who has been doing the Vegas circuit doing magic like Criss Angel using his powers and abilities. They've tracked Dave down into a bathroom at NYU with plans to get the Grimhold mentioned earlier back from him. (It's interesting to note that both Alfred Molina and Toby Kebbell appear in Jerry Bruckheimer's other summer film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, except in that one, Molina plays a more comic role and Kebbell plays a serious one, opposite from Sorcerer's.)
This entire scene takes place in this bathroom as the camera zooms in and we hear Jay Baruchel off-camera singing (probably while peeing). Stone walks in wearing a leather outfit, his blonde hair spiked up for an outlandishly garish look, and he says to Dave, 'So you're the one, the Prime Merlinean, eh? You don't look like much.' Dave has no idea who he is or what he's talking about, which Drake seems to like because it 'makes things easy'. He kicks something into what looks like the hand dryer, saying something about not wanting anyone to hear Dave's 'girlie cries'. Dave still has no idea who he is and asks if he's in Depeche Mode. (Another big laugh.) Dave whines about this being like high school all over again, as Drake pins him against the wall.
And then Horvath walks in and says 'Hello, Dave, I'm going to kill you. Right here in this dismal bathroom.' But first, he wants to know where the Grimhold is, which he refers to as a 'she'. Dave plays dumb and doesn't know what Max is talking about. Horvath says, 'Oh, he hasn't told you the truth about who's inside the doll?' and that Dave has 'put his faith in the wrong man.' He then asks Dave if he's ever been in love and realizing that Dave is currently in love (with Becky, who finally agreed to a date), Horvath suggests what might happen if Dave lost her, and asks again for the Grimhold. Dave says, 'I don't know'. Horvath laughs and says that Dave really is the worst liar.
'That's what I keep telling him,' Balthazar says off camera and we see that he has caught Drake and has him suspended in the air. 'Want your guy back?' and he sends Drake flying across the room.
Balthazar advances, waves his hand and turns the bathroom mirror into some sort of liquid portal, which Horvath refers to as the 'Hungarian Mirror Trap', saying he hadn't seen it in a while, to which Balthazar responds that he's 'old-fashioned'. The two of them struggle to force the other one into the mirror, until Balthazar sends Horvath flying into the stalls, and Balthazar asks Dave what he's doing. Turteltaub has mentioned that these two clips weren't necessarily the best scenes in the movie as much as the two scenes that were completely finished in terms of the FX.
Earlier, we had a chance to sit down with Mr. Cage himself to talk exclusively not only about The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but also the movie he's currently shooting, the 3D revenge thriller Drive Angry.
ComingSoon.net: 'I love the Miles Davis analogy you made earlier in regards to your acting, and it's funny, because Davis took a lot of chances. You also take chances, especially for a movie like this where you're taking something you really like, creating something brand new and coming out in the middle of a summer full of sequels and sure-things. Can you talk about what inspired you to take these kinds of chances and to try and do something really different?'
Nicolas Cage: 'Well, what's interesting about it for me is that I felt very comfortable with this part in that regard. It wasn't like a chance I took with Kick-Ass. I knew that this would be a good fit for me, but I don't think people know that, so that was what was new about it, I was getting to play something that had been a dream of mine for a while. So, in terms of my comfort zone, that wasn't in the balance, I felt pretty confident with it. But taking risks and doing work that challenges me is how I learn or how I grow or how I possibly get something. I don't really know what I'm gonna get, but when I hear it, I can intuit, I intuitively know its right. I can't keep doing things that I am comfortable with, that I love too much. I gotta do things that I don't love too much, because that way I will be pushed and pulled in new directions.'
CS: 'How about convincing Jerry or Jon, both people you've worked with before, to get involved with this new idea you have?'
Cage: 'You know what? Jerry went for it right away. He sparked right away which was great. He read the script and said, 'Hey, we're doing this,' and I was really touched by that for a lotta reasons, first because I was thrilled, and I knew we were gonna have a wonderfully, wildly entertaining movie, but also because he read the script and was a friend about it.'
CS: 'I love how reactions have gone from when the project was first announced from the first teaser to the second teaser. As people see more and more, they start getting more interested and the reactions get better and better. Do you follow any of that stuff at all as it's going on or do you really stay separate from the outside world?'
Cage: 'It's hard not to follow it because people will tell you about it even if you're not anyway, but I try to stay somewhat removed from all that, because I feel like once I've made the movie, outside of the fact that yeah, I want to meet people like here at WonderCon who are enthusiastic about pop art. But it's really left the nest and there's not too much more I can do about it. It's off on its own.'
CS: 'National Treasure is a great example of that. No one knew what to expect, and it just exploded. I'm interested in that, because with this, you're trying to make a family movie, which is highly admirable. Not many studios are trying to make movies that adults and kids can enjoy together, movies for everybody.'
Cage: 'Everybody, yeah. Well, I do believe that about The Sorcerer's Apprentice, that it will be some really scary, spooky moments in it that will entertain adults as well.'
CS: 'What about the comedy? You've done a lot of roles with the comedic side. Are you taking more of a serious role in this one and letting Jay run with that?'
Cage: 'I think in some ways, yeah. I think their relationship is not unlike Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Jay has got this wonderful physicality about him that's so fun to watch, but Balthazar, he's the teacher and he's gotta keep him in balance to get the job done, because there's a lot of pressure at stake, something really bad is brewing. It's called 'The Rising' and that's the spell that the magicians that use the magic for selfish gains try to take over humanity, the Morganeans, and then the magicians that use magic to help mankind, the Merlineans, are trying to keep that from happening.'
CS: 'Was all that stuff you worked out very early on with the guys who wrote it?'
Cage: 'Yeah, we all talked about it. It was always very important to me that the laws of magic were somehow presented and that a true, good magician would never ever use the powers of magic to promote himself or to sit at the best table. He would only use the power he felt that he could help on some level.'
CS: 'How do you feel about doing projects like this and Ghost Rider where there's so much special FX involved, there's no way of knowing what's going on until after they're done? Do you get a chance to see this stuff as it's progressing or do you generally wait?'
Cage: 'I pretty much just wait it out until they show me something. I feel that if I can do movies that rely heavily on the imagination I have a lotta room to play with it. Like I said earlier, that the possibilities are limitless, it's an infinite number of choices you can do if you're not fitting them within the context of a reality or quote-unquote 'reality,' you know, whatever that is.'
CS: 'You talked earlier about doing different things in your comfort zone. You do make a lot of movies and I'd think at a certain point as an actor, you could do one movie a year, but you really are always finding interesting projects and jumping into them. Like Drive Angry for instance.'
Cage: Well, I have been blessed with that, I mean, I must say, so far--knock on wood--I've made movies I really wanted to make. Movies that came to me or I sought out, but appealed to me on some dimensional level. But they've always scared me a little except for maybe Sorcerer's - I've always felt like, 'Well, what's going to happen here? What's the challenge? What's the risk?' I think that's because that's when I feel I'm most alive in my work, or my sounds, just when I can do something that pushes me outta my comfort zone.'
CS: 'Have you and Jon and Jerry talked about what you want to do with National Treasure 3, where you want to go with it and what you want to do different? I assume you'd want to do something completely different, because this was never planned as a trilogy.'
Cage: 'That's something you'd have to talk with Jerry about because I don't know what they have in store. I'm not really contacted until they're really had it thought out, the whole concept, and then they'll pitch it to me. I think they do that because they want to make sure that they have it right and everyone will be happy.'
CS: 'Have you started working on Drive Angry or is that done shooting?'
Cage: 'I just started Drive Angry. I'm very excited about it. I'm enjoying working with Patrick Lussier, working with Amber Heard, David Morse. The reason why I'm so excited about it is because I feel that it's cutting edge. It's a 1970's style road actioner with supernatural elements in 3D from scratch, so it's like it's not a veneer has been put on after the movie's been made, it's that the cameras are all 3D cameras and it's all being dialed-in to embrace the cars and the images. Patrick's got it very carefully thought out. Every day I work on it, I get excited about new possibilities with it. Billy Burke plays a character who is a Satanist, a cultist and he's a fascinating character, but he actually does some pretty awful things in the park with my character's daughter. What happens is he sorta calls my character up, but I don't want to talk too much about it.'
CS: 'Are you changing your acting style a lot for the 3D cameras or not really?'
Cage: 'I'm trying to mess with the format. I'm trying to see, 'Well, can I stick my tongue out here and have it go 3D?' I'm actually trying to do things like that with it as an actor, 'Well, how can I mess with this? How can I mess with this new format?' I'll do scenes where I'll try to get the tongue all the way out to the second row of the audience.'
CS: 'Is there going to be a similar amount of driving action ala the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds you did a while ago?'
Cage: 'Yeah, I mean, there will be a lotta that. It's called Drive Angry so I mean, there's gonna be a lotta car chases in it.'
CS: 'Are you gonna have any footage ready for Comic-Con this year?'
Cage: 'I hope so. That would be great. I'm sure they'll do their best to get something out there.'"
Showing posts with label The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE conjures up a trailer!
From ComingSoon.net:
"[Disney] has debuted the first trailer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Jon Turteltaub. Opening in theaters on July 16, the adventure film stars Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci and Toby Kebbell.
In The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Balthazar Blake (Cage) is a master sorcerer in modern-day Manhattan trying to defend the city from his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Molina). Balthazar can't do it alone, so he recruits Dave Stutler (Baruchel), a seemingly average guy who demonstrates hidden potential, as his reluctant protégé. The sorcerer gives his unwilling accomplice a crash course in the art and science of magic, and together, these unlikely partners work to stop the forces of darkness. It'll take all the courage Dave can muster to survive his training, save the city and get the girl as he becomes 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'".
UPDATE:
New trailer!
"[Disney] has debuted the first trailer for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Jon Turteltaub. Opening in theaters on July 16, the adventure film stars Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci and Toby Kebbell.
In The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Balthazar Blake (Cage) is a master sorcerer in modern-day Manhattan trying to defend the city from his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Molina). Balthazar can't do it alone, so he recruits Dave Stutler (Baruchel), a seemingly average guy who demonstrates hidden potential, as his reluctant protégé. The sorcerer gives his unwilling accomplice a crash course in the art and science of magic, and together, these unlikely partners work to stop the forces of darkness. It'll take all the courage Dave can muster to survive his training, save the city and get the girl as he becomes 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'".
UPDATE:
New trailer!
Friday, November 6, 2009
Jerry Bruckheimer on his upcoming projects with Disney!
From ComingSoon.net:
"The day ComingSoon.net first screened the trailer for Disney's upcoming action-adventure Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, we also chatted with powerhouse producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Jordan Mechner, the creator of the video game on which the movie is based. Bruckheimer not only talked to us at great length about his latest project, but enlightened us a little about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as well.
Q: The one thing I didn't see in the trailer was the scene where he jumps across a ledge, grabs on and has to pull himself back up. Is that going to be in the movie?
Jordan Mechner: 'You didn't see that? Maybe we better show it a third time.' (laughs)
Jerry Bruckheimer: 'You'll have to see the movie.'
Q: Those of us who go back to the '89 original, that's what we remember. So how is that a starting point for the wonderful Parkour-esque moves we now see?
Mechner: 'I think what he says is exactly right. It was a starting point. I did the best I could on a side-scrolling Apple II to try to capture that kind of excitement, and running and jumping and really the first 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 was the immediate inspiration for the first 'Prince of Persia' game. But I think the movie, as you've seen, goes very far beyond that. There's Parkour, there's sword fighting. It's pretty extreme.'
Q: With a lot of the games adaptations of the past, one of the big digressions I think is they throw out everything about the game and retain a few aesthetic choices. It looks like with the Sands of Time, the acrobatic moves of the characters - it's like you've really incorporated a lot of the actual game-play styles from the game directly into what you've done narratively on film. Is that something that was important to you to maintain a lot of what is the character of Prince of Persia?
Mechner: 'Yeah, the movie's mostly based on 'The Sands of Time', which is the 2003 game that I did with Ubisoft Montrel. Rather than try to do a literal retelling of the game, what I pitched to Jerry and Disney in 2004 and I think what the movie very much is, it's characters and elements, some of the coolest elements from the game, sort of reconfigured into a story that makes a great movie. And that was what we set out to do in the beginning.'
Bruckheimer: 'And Jordan wrote the first two drafts of the script so he was heavily involved. The fact that he's here means he likes the movie (room laughs) so that always helps. You won't be reading him online saying 'Don't go see it.' It's good.'
Q: So if you've played through the game you're going to recognize a lot of the characters in the film?
Mechner: 'Yeah, although if you've played the game, you're not going to know what happens in the movie. It's a different story, but yet you'll recognize the characters, situations in a different form. I think it's very true to the spirit of the game.'
Q: The games have sort of evolved. You have the original, which I think was remade for Xbox Live, you've got 'Sands of Time', 'Warrior Within', this is the newest iteration of the game. In adapting this, was there any elements from any other iterations of Prince of Persia that you borrowed or thought would be useful and could include as a wink or nod to the fans?
Mechner: 'At the time I wrote the first draft of the script, those other games hadn't come out yet, so the screenplay is based on 'The Sands of Time', but as you probably see in the trailer, the production design took a lot of inspiration from later games as well. With Jake's costume, certainly.'
Q: As far as we've seen there aren't any creatures from 'Sands of Time' that I remember fighting. Did you specifically not want to have any creatures in the storyline and focus on just humans?
Mechner: 'That's a really good specific example of what we were talking about before. There are no sand monsters in the movie. For the game, turning everybody in the world except for the two main characters into sand monsters was really useful because it created an inexhaustible supply of enemies for you as a player to fight. But that's a story that's meant to be played with a controller in your hand. And a movie is an experience that's sort of a ride to go on shared by an audience, so we didn't want to make the movie about fighting monsters.'
Q: You said earlier that when you play the game, you're not going to know what happens in the movie, so where did you come up with the concept? I know it's based on the games, but where is the story going in the movie?
Mechner: 'I don't want to tell the story of the movie, you have to see the movie.'
Bruckheimer: 'It's more of a Biblical tale. It's about a street urchin who gets picked up by the king, made a prince - it's all family dynamics that happen. These two brothers who are not really his brothers, not by birth. That's the start of the drama. And an uncle who's jealous of all of them.'
Mechner: 'And this really cool dagger that can turn back time, which is this great power and also this great temptation--it's what the villain--you got that part.' (laughs)
Q: Judging from the trailer, they're sort of on a quest. They have to take this dagger back to a certain temple to get rid of it, I suppose?
Bruckheimer: 'It's sort of part of the story to safeguard the dagger from all the people trying to get their hands on it.'
Q: What had to be developed to do those visual effects with the sands of time and the sands collapsing in the temple?
Bruckheimer: 'What you do is you start with storyboards. First it starts from Jordan's mind and from our writers, we give it to our production designer, takes it to another step, give it to our artists and they start drawing things. From what we draw we create animatics, they're visual representations, probably how Jordan starts his games. And then we start embellishing, we start doing tests, embellishing things that we see and we like. We create layers, like the first time we did the actual pushing the dagger and the sand comes out, there was nothing going through his body. He'd just lift it above the scene and stayed there, started using the sand, electricity going through his body. So you keep layering it. When you see the movie in the theaters it will be more layers than what you see just now.'
Q: Can you talk about the casting of Jake and what you saw in him that made him right for this role?
Bruckheimer: 'I always thought he was... I still think he is a huge movie star. [He's one of those guys who can be a huge hero], romantic hero. He's handsome, he's a wonderful actor. I've always wanted to work with him. We got very lucky that he A) liked the material and B) was available to do it. There was no other choice.'
Q: Can you talk about some of the physical training that he had to go through?
Bruckheimer: 'A lot. I mean, he really worked hard. He worked for months and months before the movie started. He trained every single day. He rode bikes, he lifted weights, he had a very specific diet. He couldn't have any fats, and it was really a lot of protein, and all during filming, he was working in 120 degree heat. Jordan said he saw him, after a long day, around 7 at night taking a jog, running, so he kept it up through the whole movie. He had a trainer with him both here and in Morocco working with him to make sure he really kept his physical appearance the way he wanted it to be.'
Q: What do you have to do to modern day Morocco to make it look like ancient Persia?
Bruckheimer: 'It's just sand. (room laughs) There's plenty of it there. No, what we did was we had a fantastic production designer who created these amazing sets. We actually built a lot of what you saw. And the other thing we had... We added some set extensions to the top of the frame but a lot of things that you see in there are actually stuff that we built or took structures in Morocco and added our own construction to those actual old structures. We found a part of the city that was one of the most ancient parts of the city that we were able to use for this movie. The city allowed us to shoot there and the government allowed us work with the residents as far as being in the suits.'
Mechner: 'That was actually my first week on set. Seeing that, I literally couldn't tell where the real city ended and the set began. There were people walking through the streets. I couldn't tell if they were extras or if they were people who lived there.'
Bruckheimer: 'Yeah, because it's stopped in time. We were driving up, some of the sets were in the Atlas mountains. As you're going up there, there's no electricity. The women are the ones who do all the work. They carry these huge bundles of wood on their back. They carry stuff on their head. They carry the children. It's just unbelievable. It's like you're back in the sixth century.'
Q: What city?
Bruckheimer: 'We were in different ones. We were in Ouarzazate.'
Mechner: 'Marrakech, Ouarzazate, Erfoud. It's actually one of the things that was so cool for me and such a surprise really coming from the video game world where I was kind of used to various ways of trying to make this look real on the screen. To actually be in the desert where it's 125 degrees and there's real sandstorms. How many movies have you seen where there's a scene in the desert oasis and it's a set? This was a real desert oasis. And I think the fact that besides all the action and adventure story aspects of it, this is an epic movie that's shot on location on a scale that really hasn't been done. It's never been really seen on the screen looking this way ever so I think that really moves the whole production to another level. It's not what people expect from a video game movie.'
Q: How much Parkour training was there? Any experts come in?
Bruckheimer: 'We did. We brought in the key experts out of France with us. In the opening of the movie, there's a young man who portrays Jake as a young boy. He was a Parkour expert. He's 10-years-old and he's amazing. Absolutely amazing. They sent us online, Facebook things of these kids. This kid was extraordinary.'
Q: How much of what we saw was practical versus CGI?
Bruckheimer: 'When he's jumping across the rooftops, that's all real. A lot of the stuff that's falling on him is all CGI but all the roof stuff, all the rooftops is all real stuff.'
Q: And climbing the arrows?
Bruckheimer: 'That is a set.'
Q: But he's doing it.
Bruckheimer: 'Yes, he's doing it on the set.'
Q: What are the challenges thinking as a film versus thinking as a video game?
Mechner: 'I loved movies growing up as a kid before I loved games, in fact actually before games had been invented, video games had been invented. This is a game that was inspired by movies so I think really in writing the first draft of the screenplay, I just kind of set out to write a movie in that genre, the kind of movie that I love, that inspired me to create the game in the first place.'
Q: What makes this game translate well to screen?
Bruckheimer: 'I think it's the fact that it's so different than anything that's in the marketplace. You look at all the Spider-Man's and all the stuff that's coming out, Iron Man and all these Transformers. This is so unique, so fresh and different. We just loved the character that Jordan created. So it takes you back to old ancient periods. The movie when you see it, it's like an old-fashioned, romantic adventure film. That's really what it is. It's like a Lawrence of Arabia with this kind of supernatural element added to it. But it's really a wonderful biblical story about jealousy. It goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts through history, so it embellishes upon interesting things. We found, we tested the movie a few weeks ago. It tested extraordinarily high. It surprised me because I always think these things are going to fail but this one turned out great. The women, I was surprised, I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys , but the women flipped over this film. I've never had a score where the parents, and there is violence, it's PG-13, the parents rated the film 100% excellent or very good which never happens. So it's one of these movies that we know they'll take their children to go see it which is a huge advantage for a film if the parents think it's cool that the kids can see it.'
Q: Not even Pirates tested that high?
Bruckheimer: 'We were right up there with Pirates. In fact, the number was a little higher but it's not Pirates, but Pirates wasn't Pirates either when it tested. So you never know what you have. Testing can be very... you don't know. I've had films test, nobody showed up. We did a movie called Glory Road which had enormous tests. We couldn't get people to go see it. It's a terrific film but nobody showed up.'
Q: How often is the dagger actually used? Is it because Jake screws up or is trying to fix events going on around him?
Bruckheimer: 'Both. Both. It happens by accident initially and then he uses it to try to fix something that is going terribly bad. It turns back time.'
Mechner: 'You're not very familiar with how the dagger works? Basically, in the game, the dagger, if you make a mistake, if you're dying, if you're falling to your death, you can actually push the switch on the dagger's handle and it brings you back to the moment before you made the mistake. So you can actually use it to avoid mistakes and people around you aren't going to be aware that you did that.'
Q: Are there scenes like that in the movie?
Bruckheimer: 'If he has it. That's the key.'
Mechner: 'This gets to a difference between the game and the movie. In the game, the dagger has so many powers. You're using it all the time. If we'd done that in the movie, the hero would've been omnipotent and it wouldn't have been very interesting. So in the movie, there's a lot of constraints. You've got to be very careful about when you can use the dagger.'
Bruckheimer: 'It's very limited. It has a little bit of sand in it.'
Q: Was that Alfred Molina we saw a glimpse of?
Bruckheimer: 'It is.'
Q: So he's in everything now with you?
Bruckheimer: 'He's our go-to guy. He's fantastic.'
Q: You have The Sorcerer's Apprentice coming out this summer. How did you imagine a Fantasia short becoming a big summer blockbuster film?
Bruckheimer: 'We didn't, but somebody else did. Nic Cage and some other people decided it'd be kinda cool to do and came to us. We developed the screenplay with them and took this little moment in Fantasia and created an entire story.'
Q: How crazy is Nic going to be in The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
Bruckheimer: 'I think he's a wonderful mystical character in it. He's really a character. It's certainly Nic Cage you want to watch on screen. You're never quite sure what he's going to do or how he's going to react.'
Q: With the comments that Bob Iger recently made, it seems there is a paradigm shift. How do you move forward?
Bruckheimer: 'We take direction from whoever our financier is and in this case we have a deal with Disney. Disney decided a few years ago they wanted to make more family-orientated pictures and we made Pirates of the Caribbean, so we made National Treasure. We adjust to the people who are paying for this and what they want to make. We develop stories we feel will benefit them not only in a financial, but in a way that crosses all the different platforms. Pirates is a great example. It crosses many platforms. Michael Singer, who works with us, was at Disneyland over the weekend and he said there was an hour wait to get into the Pirates of the Caribbean. You can see how a movie can affect and change the ride itself and the characters. So it benefits everybody.'
Q: There's a worry about Johnny Depp's commitment to Pirates 4. Are you going to be able to make him comfortable with the new people at Disney?
Bruckheimer: 'I think that he was very close with Dick [Cook]. We loved him and part of our success is attributed to Dick which is fantastic, but things change. We've been through a ton of management here at Disney and have had many bosses through the years that I've been here. Somehow you adjust and the gentleman they brought in is very smart. As an executive he's had an enormous amount of success. He's been a very good partner to us, but that doesn't mean we won't work with Dick somewhere else down the line. Who knows. We'll just have to see what happens.'
Q: I read you're adapting another game, Shattered Union.
Bruckheimer: 'It's something we're developing which takes years. When did you sell this to us, '04?'
Mechner: ''04.'
Bruckheimer: 'So it took us five years to get this one going.'
Q: What's your attraction to the video game world?
Bruckheimer: 'It's fascinating. It's always the concept. Two reasons: Concept, characters, theme and pre-sold title. If you go online and read his blogs, people blog about Prince of Persia and its unbelievable the fan base that he has for his game. We had all gamer press before you came in and they're so excited to see this and skeptical to be quite honest. Skeptical we picked Jake and weren't sure if he was the right for the character, but when they saw this, they got very excited. They all applauded at the end of it and felt it was true to what Jordan had originally created. They go back to his first game and were asking me questions about a game he created in '89. They're talking about a game they played in '89 and asked if this character is in it so they're really into this.'
Q: You're a busy guy so do you stay on top of what's happening in video games?
Bruckheimer: 'This is my genesis here that keeps me current. That's how we do it. As I get older, I lean more and more on younger people to bring me stuff that I might not be aware of, but make me aware of it.'
Q: What's your take on making the Lone Ranger current for today's audience?
Bruckheimer: 'Elliot Rossi worked on that with a couple of other writers and Johnny [Depp] so they'll create something that has a kind of true to the western, but also other elements like we did with Pirates so it won't be just a straight ahead western.'
Q: We know Johnny Depp wants to play Tonto. Do you have any thoughts as to who the ranger would be?
Bruckheimer: 'Not yet. We're still creating a pretty wide net and figuring it out. It comes down to who is available when we want to make it. We have a wish list, but we were lucky on this one. Our wish list came through.'"
"The day ComingSoon.net first screened the trailer for Disney's upcoming action-adventure Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, we also chatted with powerhouse producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Jordan Mechner, the creator of the video game on which the movie is based. Bruckheimer not only talked to us at great length about his latest project, but enlightened us a little about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as well.
Q: The one thing I didn't see in the trailer was the scene where he jumps across a ledge, grabs on and has to pull himself back up. Is that going to be in the movie?
Jordan Mechner: 'You didn't see that? Maybe we better show it a third time.' (laughs)
Jerry Bruckheimer: 'You'll have to see the movie.'
Q: Those of us who go back to the '89 original, that's what we remember. So how is that a starting point for the wonderful Parkour-esque moves we now see?
Mechner: 'I think what he says is exactly right. It was a starting point. I did the best I could on a side-scrolling Apple II to try to capture that kind of excitement, and running and jumping and really the first 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 was the immediate inspiration for the first 'Prince of Persia' game. But I think the movie, as you've seen, goes very far beyond that. There's Parkour, there's sword fighting. It's pretty extreme.'
Q: With a lot of the games adaptations of the past, one of the big digressions I think is they throw out everything about the game and retain a few aesthetic choices. It looks like with the Sands of Time, the acrobatic moves of the characters - it's like you've really incorporated a lot of the actual game-play styles from the game directly into what you've done narratively on film. Is that something that was important to you to maintain a lot of what is the character of Prince of Persia?
Mechner: 'Yeah, the movie's mostly based on 'The Sands of Time', which is the 2003 game that I did with Ubisoft Montrel. Rather than try to do a literal retelling of the game, what I pitched to Jerry and Disney in 2004 and I think what the movie very much is, it's characters and elements, some of the coolest elements from the game, sort of reconfigured into a story that makes a great movie. And that was what we set out to do in the beginning.'
Bruckheimer: 'And Jordan wrote the first two drafts of the script so he was heavily involved. The fact that he's here means he likes the movie (room laughs) so that always helps. You won't be reading him online saying 'Don't go see it.' It's good.'
Q: So if you've played through the game you're going to recognize a lot of the characters in the film?
Mechner: 'Yeah, although if you've played the game, you're not going to know what happens in the movie. It's a different story, but yet you'll recognize the characters, situations in a different form. I think it's very true to the spirit of the game.'
Q: The games have sort of evolved. You have the original, which I think was remade for Xbox Live, you've got 'Sands of Time', 'Warrior Within', this is the newest iteration of the game. In adapting this, was there any elements from any other iterations of Prince of Persia that you borrowed or thought would be useful and could include as a wink or nod to the fans?
Mechner: 'At the time I wrote the first draft of the script, those other games hadn't come out yet, so the screenplay is based on 'The Sands of Time', but as you probably see in the trailer, the production design took a lot of inspiration from later games as well. With Jake's costume, certainly.'
Q: As far as we've seen there aren't any creatures from 'Sands of Time' that I remember fighting. Did you specifically not want to have any creatures in the storyline and focus on just humans?
Mechner: 'That's a really good specific example of what we were talking about before. There are no sand monsters in the movie. For the game, turning everybody in the world except for the two main characters into sand monsters was really useful because it created an inexhaustible supply of enemies for you as a player to fight. But that's a story that's meant to be played with a controller in your hand. And a movie is an experience that's sort of a ride to go on shared by an audience, so we didn't want to make the movie about fighting monsters.'
Q: You said earlier that when you play the game, you're not going to know what happens in the movie, so where did you come up with the concept? I know it's based on the games, but where is the story going in the movie?
Mechner: 'I don't want to tell the story of the movie, you have to see the movie.'
Bruckheimer: 'It's more of a Biblical tale. It's about a street urchin who gets picked up by the king, made a prince - it's all family dynamics that happen. These two brothers who are not really his brothers, not by birth. That's the start of the drama. And an uncle who's jealous of all of them.'
Mechner: 'And this really cool dagger that can turn back time, which is this great power and also this great temptation--it's what the villain--you got that part.' (laughs)
Q: Judging from the trailer, they're sort of on a quest. They have to take this dagger back to a certain temple to get rid of it, I suppose?
Bruckheimer: 'It's sort of part of the story to safeguard the dagger from all the people trying to get their hands on it.'
Q: What had to be developed to do those visual effects with the sands of time and the sands collapsing in the temple?
Bruckheimer: 'What you do is you start with storyboards. First it starts from Jordan's mind and from our writers, we give it to our production designer, takes it to another step, give it to our artists and they start drawing things. From what we draw we create animatics, they're visual representations, probably how Jordan starts his games. And then we start embellishing, we start doing tests, embellishing things that we see and we like. We create layers, like the first time we did the actual pushing the dagger and the sand comes out, there was nothing going through his body. He'd just lift it above the scene and stayed there, started using the sand, electricity going through his body. So you keep layering it. When you see the movie in the theaters it will be more layers than what you see just now.'
Q: Can you talk about the casting of Jake and what you saw in him that made him right for this role?
Bruckheimer: 'I always thought he was... I still think he is a huge movie star. [He's one of those guys who can be a huge hero], romantic hero. He's handsome, he's a wonderful actor. I've always wanted to work with him. We got very lucky that he A) liked the material and B) was available to do it. There was no other choice.'
Q: Can you talk about some of the physical training that he had to go through?
Bruckheimer: 'A lot. I mean, he really worked hard. He worked for months and months before the movie started. He trained every single day. He rode bikes, he lifted weights, he had a very specific diet. He couldn't have any fats, and it was really a lot of protein, and all during filming, he was working in 120 degree heat. Jordan said he saw him, after a long day, around 7 at night taking a jog, running, so he kept it up through the whole movie. He had a trainer with him both here and in Morocco working with him to make sure he really kept his physical appearance the way he wanted it to be.'
Q: What do you have to do to modern day Morocco to make it look like ancient Persia?
Bruckheimer: 'It's just sand. (room laughs) There's plenty of it there. No, what we did was we had a fantastic production designer who created these amazing sets. We actually built a lot of what you saw. And the other thing we had... We added some set extensions to the top of the frame but a lot of things that you see in there are actually stuff that we built or took structures in Morocco and added our own construction to those actual old structures. We found a part of the city that was one of the most ancient parts of the city that we were able to use for this movie. The city allowed us to shoot there and the government allowed us work with the residents as far as being in the suits.'
Mechner: 'That was actually my first week on set. Seeing that, I literally couldn't tell where the real city ended and the set began. There were people walking through the streets. I couldn't tell if they were extras or if they were people who lived there.'
Bruckheimer: 'Yeah, because it's stopped in time. We were driving up, some of the sets were in the Atlas mountains. As you're going up there, there's no electricity. The women are the ones who do all the work. They carry these huge bundles of wood on their back. They carry stuff on their head. They carry the children. It's just unbelievable. It's like you're back in the sixth century.'
Q: What city?
Bruckheimer: 'We were in different ones. We were in Ouarzazate.'
Mechner: 'Marrakech, Ouarzazate, Erfoud. It's actually one of the things that was so cool for me and such a surprise really coming from the video game world where I was kind of used to various ways of trying to make this look real on the screen. To actually be in the desert where it's 125 degrees and there's real sandstorms. How many movies have you seen where there's a scene in the desert oasis and it's a set? This was a real desert oasis. And I think the fact that besides all the action and adventure story aspects of it, this is an epic movie that's shot on location on a scale that really hasn't been done. It's never been really seen on the screen looking this way ever so I think that really moves the whole production to another level. It's not what people expect from a video game movie.'
Q: How much Parkour training was there? Any experts come in?
Bruckheimer: 'We did. We brought in the key experts out of France with us. In the opening of the movie, there's a young man who portrays Jake as a young boy. He was a Parkour expert. He's 10-years-old and he's amazing. Absolutely amazing. They sent us online, Facebook things of these kids. This kid was extraordinary.'
Q: How much of what we saw was practical versus CGI?
Bruckheimer: 'When he's jumping across the rooftops, that's all real. A lot of the stuff that's falling on him is all CGI but all the roof stuff, all the rooftops is all real stuff.'
Q: And climbing the arrows?
Bruckheimer: 'That is a set.'
Q: But he's doing it.
Bruckheimer: 'Yes, he's doing it on the set.'
Q: What are the challenges thinking as a film versus thinking as a video game?
Mechner: 'I loved movies growing up as a kid before I loved games, in fact actually before games had been invented, video games had been invented. This is a game that was inspired by movies so I think really in writing the first draft of the screenplay, I just kind of set out to write a movie in that genre, the kind of movie that I love, that inspired me to create the game in the first place.'
Q: What makes this game translate well to screen?
Bruckheimer: 'I think it's the fact that it's so different than anything that's in the marketplace. You look at all the Spider-Man's and all the stuff that's coming out, Iron Man and all these Transformers. This is so unique, so fresh and different. We just loved the character that Jordan created. So it takes you back to old ancient periods. The movie when you see it, it's like an old-fashioned, romantic adventure film. That's really what it is. It's like a Lawrence of Arabia with this kind of supernatural element added to it. But it's really a wonderful biblical story about jealousy. It goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts through history, so it embellishes upon interesting things. We found, we tested the movie a few weeks ago. It tested extraordinarily high. It surprised me because I always think these things are going to fail but this one turned out great. The women, I was surprised, I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys , but the women flipped over this film. I've never had a score where the parents, and there is violence, it's PG-13, the parents rated the film 100% excellent or very good which never happens. So it's one of these movies that we know they'll take their children to go see it which is a huge advantage for a film if the parents think it's cool that the kids can see it.'
Q: Not even Pirates tested that high?
Bruckheimer: 'We were right up there with Pirates. In fact, the number was a little higher but it's not Pirates, but Pirates wasn't Pirates either when it tested. So you never know what you have. Testing can be very... you don't know. I've had films test, nobody showed up. We did a movie called Glory Road which had enormous tests. We couldn't get people to go see it. It's a terrific film but nobody showed up.'
Q: How often is the dagger actually used? Is it because Jake screws up or is trying to fix events going on around him?
Bruckheimer: 'Both. Both. It happens by accident initially and then he uses it to try to fix something that is going terribly bad. It turns back time.'
Mechner: 'You're not very familiar with how the dagger works? Basically, in the game, the dagger, if you make a mistake, if you're dying, if you're falling to your death, you can actually push the switch on the dagger's handle and it brings you back to the moment before you made the mistake. So you can actually use it to avoid mistakes and people around you aren't going to be aware that you did that.'
Q: Are there scenes like that in the movie?
Bruckheimer: 'If he has it. That's the key.'
Mechner: 'This gets to a difference between the game and the movie. In the game, the dagger has so many powers. You're using it all the time. If we'd done that in the movie, the hero would've been omnipotent and it wouldn't have been very interesting. So in the movie, there's a lot of constraints. You've got to be very careful about when you can use the dagger.'
Bruckheimer: 'It's very limited. It has a little bit of sand in it.'
Q: Was that Alfred Molina we saw a glimpse of?
Bruckheimer: 'It is.'
Q: So he's in everything now with you?
Bruckheimer: 'He's our go-to guy. He's fantastic.'
Q: You have The Sorcerer's Apprentice coming out this summer. How did you imagine a Fantasia short becoming a big summer blockbuster film?
Bruckheimer: 'We didn't, but somebody else did. Nic Cage and some other people decided it'd be kinda cool to do and came to us. We developed the screenplay with them and took this little moment in Fantasia and created an entire story.'
Q: How crazy is Nic going to be in The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
Bruckheimer: 'I think he's a wonderful mystical character in it. He's really a character. It's certainly Nic Cage you want to watch on screen. You're never quite sure what he's going to do or how he's going to react.'
Q: With the comments that Bob Iger recently made, it seems there is a paradigm shift. How do you move forward?
Bruckheimer: 'We take direction from whoever our financier is and in this case we have a deal with Disney. Disney decided a few years ago they wanted to make more family-orientated pictures and we made Pirates of the Caribbean, so we made National Treasure. We adjust to the people who are paying for this and what they want to make. We develop stories we feel will benefit them not only in a financial, but in a way that crosses all the different platforms. Pirates is a great example. It crosses many platforms. Michael Singer, who works with us, was at Disneyland over the weekend and he said there was an hour wait to get into the Pirates of the Caribbean. You can see how a movie can affect and change the ride itself and the characters. So it benefits everybody.'
Q: There's a worry about Johnny Depp's commitment to Pirates 4. Are you going to be able to make him comfortable with the new people at Disney?
Bruckheimer: 'I think that he was very close with Dick [Cook]. We loved him and part of our success is attributed to Dick which is fantastic, but things change. We've been through a ton of management here at Disney and have had many bosses through the years that I've been here. Somehow you adjust and the gentleman they brought in is very smart. As an executive he's had an enormous amount of success. He's been a very good partner to us, but that doesn't mean we won't work with Dick somewhere else down the line. Who knows. We'll just have to see what happens.'
Q: I read you're adapting another game, Shattered Union.
Bruckheimer: 'It's something we're developing which takes years. When did you sell this to us, '04?'
Mechner: ''04.'
Bruckheimer: 'So it took us five years to get this one going.'
Q: What's your attraction to the video game world?
Bruckheimer: 'It's fascinating. It's always the concept. Two reasons: Concept, characters, theme and pre-sold title. If you go online and read his blogs, people blog about Prince of Persia and its unbelievable the fan base that he has for his game. We had all gamer press before you came in and they're so excited to see this and skeptical to be quite honest. Skeptical we picked Jake and weren't sure if he was the right for the character, but when they saw this, they got very excited. They all applauded at the end of it and felt it was true to what Jordan had originally created. They go back to his first game and were asking me questions about a game he created in '89. They're talking about a game they played in '89 and asked if this character is in it so they're really into this.'
Q: You're a busy guy so do you stay on top of what's happening in video games?
Bruckheimer: 'This is my genesis here that keeps me current. That's how we do it. As I get older, I lean more and more on younger people to bring me stuff that I might not be aware of, but make me aware of it.'
Q: What's your take on making the Lone Ranger current for today's audience?
Bruckheimer: 'Elliot Rossi worked on that with a couple of other writers and Johnny [Depp] so they'll create something that has a kind of true to the western, but also other elements like we did with Pirates so it won't be just a straight ahead western.'
Q: We know Johnny Depp wants to play Tonto. Do you have any thoughts as to who the ranger would be?
Bruckheimer: 'Not yet. We're still creating a pretty wide net and figuring it out. It comes down to who is available when we want to make it. We have a wish list, but we were lucky on this one. Our wish list came through.'"
Friday, September 11, 2009
Jerry Bruckheimer unveils PRINCE OF PERSIA and THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
From ComingSoon.net:
"Surprise guests [at D23 Expo] Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicolas Cage showed off two of next year's big summer films, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
"Surprise guests [at D23 Expo] Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicolas Cage showed off two of next year's big summer films, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Prince of Persia debuted the first trailer (which, though Bruckheimer claimed wasn't complete, seemed ready to go effects-wise). The trailer featured quite a bit of Jake Gyllenhaal as Prince Dastan and explained the basic plot: there is a magical dagger that offers the bearer the power to travel through time. Ben Kingsley (as the evil Nizam) wants to steal it and use it it to destroy the world, so Dastan and Tamina (Gemma Arterton) have to take it to 'the secret guardian temple' where it can be safe. There's quite a bit of fast cutting and flirting between Dastan and Tamina. At one point, they appear to be in disguise as servants and she asks if he's carrying the dagger. He tells her that she'll have to do a pretty thorough search to find it.
Cage told the audience that Fantasia was 'the most beautiful film of all time' and explained that The Sorcerer's Apprentice was the kind of movie he felt was important to make in the world today. The footage shown mixed behind-the-scenes shots with actual segments from film. In it, Cage plays Balthazar Blake, an ancient sorcerer who has been searching for an apprentice 'since the time of Merlin'. He finds it in young Jay Baruchel, who seems completely taken aback at the prospect of becoming a sorcerer himself.
Among the scenes showcased were glimpses of the famous broom sequence, originally from Fantasia and a quick shot of a live-action hat matching the conical blue one that Mickey Mouse wears in the feature.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is slated for May 28, 2010, while The Sorcerer's Apprentice is scheduled to hit theaters July 16, 2010."
Can't wait for trailers!!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
A Magical First Look at THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
From ComingSoon.net:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=54042
"Walt Disney Pictures filming The Sorcerer's Apprentice in a New York City subway on Thursday and Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel and Terese Palmer were spotted on the set of the big screen adaptation. The film takes place in contemporary New York, where a wizard (Cage) searches for an apprentice (Baruchel). Jerry Bruckheimer is producing."
They look really good but Nicolas Cage looks nothing like Yensid from the Fantasia short.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=54042
"Walt Disney Pictures filming The Sorcerer's Apprentice in a New York City subway on Thursday and Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel and Terese Palmer were spotted on the set of the big screen adaptation. The film takes place in contemporary New York, where a wizard (Cage) searches for an apprentice (Baruchel). Jerry Bruckheimer is producing."
They look really good but Nicolas Cage looks nothing like Yensid from the Fantasia short.
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