Film-makers plan return to Skull Island for King Kong origins story

Ben Child – guardian.co.uk

When the enormous ape fell to his death from the Empire State Building at the end of Peter Jackson’s 2005 blockbuster, you might have thought that was the end of King Kong. Not so, it seems: Hollywood is planning to bring Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland’s lavishly illustrated novel Kong: King of Skull Island to the big screen.

The book, which was published to coincide with Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic film, acts as both a prequel and a sequel to the tale. It sees Vincent Denham, son of over-reaching film-maker Carl who captured and brought the giant ape to New York, returning to Skull Island in search of his long-lost father. He is joined by Jack Driscoll, the playwright who journeyed with Denham 25 years previously. Together the pair begin to unravel the mysteries of the island.

Kong: King of Skull Island looks set to be an all-CGI affair – in contrast to Jackson’s film, which was mainly live-action. It will feature several new giant gorillas and dinosaurs not seen in the previous film, and explain such mysteries as the giant wall on the island, the origins of the islanders who worship Kong, and how he came to be king.

Spirit Pictures bought the screen rights to the book from the family of Merian C Cooper, director of the original 1933 version of King Kong. “We’re very concerned with honouring Merian C Cooper’s legacy in Hollywood. We want to make sure that whatever we deliver will honour his memory,” said Spirit’s Steve Iles.

Jackson’s film was a much-touted blockbuster in 2005, though it did not perform as well as had been expected. At the time it was the world’s most expensive film ever, with a budget of $207m (£125m). Jackson, who’s currently developing two films based on JRR Tolkien’s prequel to Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, does not appear to be involved in the new Kong project.

How Scarlett Johansson Shaped Up for Iron Man 2

Scott Huver – People.com

   Even enviable-looking Scarlett Johansson couldn’t disguise her fear at having to don a skintight catsuit for her Iron Man 2 role as the Russian spy Black Widow.
  “I kicked some major butt,” the actress, 24, told PEOPLE at Comic-Con of her training regimen to make her a shapely superhero ready for acrobatic battle scenes. “It was many, many, hours, days, and months of stunt training and strength training, but it’s fun because I had a goal. The goal was the Lycra catsuit.”
   Was she happy with the results? “Finally I was, yes,” she said with a laugh. “You put that much work into something and you put it on and you better be happy with it.”
   When it came to putting on the catsuit, “It was crazy to see it for the first time – everything all zipped up and all the weapons in there, bracelets on, the whole look. It was pretty sweet, I have to say,” she says.
   As for the impression it made, “Certainly walking on set, because a lot of the people that worked on the film were fans of the comic and of course they knew the Black Widow – they were all super excited to see the Black Widow,” she says. “When everybody in the crew were like, ‘That looks awesome!’ I knew. Like, ‘Okay.’ “

   “She was wearing an unforgiving costume,” concurred Johansson’s Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau, who was impressed by his star’s physical commitment to the role. “She didn’t eat much, that’s for sure. She likes food, as do I, and she was definitely on a low-carb diet and training very hard. It was amazing.”
   After viewing Johansson’s stunt work, Favreau says, “I think people are going to be very impressed when they see her. It’s totally different than anything you’ve seen her do before.”
   And while Johansson’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, has already showed off his beautiful bod in The Proposal, the couple also share something else in common: their reading material.
   With Iron Man 2, which opens May 7, 2010, making her a Marvel Comics superheroine, Reynolds has just landed the role of DC Comics’ Green Lantern. As a result, says Johansson, “I have quite a few stacks of comic books,” she says. “We’re in completely different [comic-book] universes over there, but it’s something that I’m certainly delving into for the first time. There is quite a stack!”

Who’s Going to Be in ‘The Avengers’

 

From AceShowBiz.com 

   On day three of San Diego Comic Con 2009, July 25, Marvel didn’t only present visitors with “Iron Man 2″ panel, but also an update to “The Avengers” in term of which superhero characters will be making an appearance in the film. After the presentation of the “Iron Man” sequel, Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios’ President of Production revealed to Io9 the potential line-up of the super team.
   “I think we know. I think it’s going to be Iron Man and Thor, Captain America and Nick Fury,” he gushed on the matter. “I think it’s safe to assume that there will be some members of the Hulk universe in the film as well. In terms of the additional I think Black Widow, sure. The SHIELD organization for sure. What’s exciting, for me, about The  Avengers movie is seeing those four characters interact with each other.”
   “I think anywhere from the first issues of The Avengers to Civil War the dynamic between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark is just awesome, it’s fascinating. It brings out sides in others that won’t be brought out in the other franchises. Going forward with the mix is a whole other thing, I think it will be cool. So to pile on another 15 or 10, frankly more than four would be too many.” Asked whether Hulk himself will be making an appearance, the studio topper stated that scribe Zak Penn “is outlining it as we speak, so we’ll see.” As for whether Thor depicter Chris Hemsworth has met with “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr., Feige responded, “Oh yes, that was the first meeting of Thor and Tony Stark, it was pretty cool.”

   “The Avengers” will pick up the story when the Earth’s mightiest heroes will have to work together to battle the biggest foe they’ve ever faced. Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson have all been confirmed to star in this film which is now set for May 4, 2012 U.S. release. Director Jon Favreau has been rumored to take the helming part, but he has stated to Movies Online recently that his involvement on the project “has yet to be determined”.
  “Remember, you have to take into account what Thor is and you don’t know that until the film’s locked,” he elaborated more. “You’re not going to know about Thor for two years, what that really means. And [The First Avenger] Captain America, they haven’t even started prepping yet. So there’s a lot of discovery that has to take place before you can understand what Avengers really is.”

Mila Kunis hunts ‘Black Swan’

Mila Kunis

By Steven Zeitchik – The Hollywood Reporter

Mila Kunis will be Natalie Portman’s nemesis.
The actress is in discussions to star opposite Portman in Darren Aronofsky’s supernatural drama “Black Swan.” The pic centers on a talented ballerina (Portman) in the New York City Ballet who is tormented by a rival who might or might not be a figment of the dancer’s imagination.
Kunis will play the rival, Lilly, with strange occurrences between the two increasing as they prepare for a big performance.

Natalie Portman

Kunis, who broke out with her role as Jason Segel’s love interest in last year’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” was among the standouts at Comic-Con during the weekend. The actress, repped by CAA and Curtis Management, turned out to promote turns in Denzel Washington starrer “The Book of Eli,” the Ben Affleck-toplined comedy “Extract” and her voice role in the animated Fox series “Family Guy.”

Kunis also is set to co-star in the relationship comedy “Date Night” alongside Steve Carell and Tina Fey.
“Swan” is set to begin shooting in the fall in New York. Aronofksy’s Protozoa Pictures is producing with Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures. The project is being financed independently, with Michael London’s Groundswell Prods. believed to be one of the lead financiers.

The project does not have distribution, but Fox Searchlight, which distributed Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” could come on board as it moves into production.

Tim Lawrence recalls creating special effects for Bigfoot and Rick Baker

Tim Lawrence shows the zombie teeth he created and wore in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. photo by BOB SELF/The Times-Union

Roger Bull  - Jacksonville.com

Tim Lawrence has spent just about all his life playing some serious make-believe. He calls it “character design,” but it’s really just make-believe.

He helped turn Michael Jackson into a zombie and played one of those who rose from the dead in “Thriller.”

He made T-Rex models for “Jurassic Park.” He was in on the original work to figure out exactly what Shrek would look like.

When Bigfoot broke into that big grin in “Harry and the Hendersons,” that was Lawrence operating his mouth.

Or how about this: In “Caddyshack II,” Lawrence was the puppeteer who moved the arms of what is probably the most famous gopher in movie history.

Lawrence is 50 now. He came back home to Jacksonville a few years ago to take care of his ailing parents in their last years. Now he’s working on starting a new career — writing and illustrating children’s books.

But he’s got a scrapbook and a couple of decades of Hollywood memories. Of “Beetlejuice” and “Shrek,” of “Ghostbusters II,” “Aliens” and even “Howard the Duck.”

It started early for him in his Murray Hill neighborhood.

“As a kid, I had a small circle of friends from elementary to high school,” he said. “We were geeks, but we were movie geeks. More specifically, we were movie monster geeks.”

So the group of them — Lawrence, Kenneth Hall, Cleve Hall, Steven Sleap and Richard Sykes — started making stuff on their own. Godzilla suits, spaceships, stop motion models.

“It was a matter of ‘I want to make a dragon, what do I have in my garage?’ And once we got rubber and molded latex, we could really go.”

Even before he graduated from The Bolles School (on scholarship, he points out) they created a little business they called Imagimation and put on shows at the old Alexander Brest Planetarium. Halloween shows, of course.

Someone at the Times-Union heard about them, wrote a story and Sally Industries gave him a call. That’s where he started designing, sculpting and programming animated characters.

In 1981, he got a job in California, making animatronics for restaurants. “Like Chuck E. Cheese,” he said, “only more

Tim Lawrence works on a fiberglass injection mold for Michael Jackson's "Change-o" head for the "Thriller" video in 1983.

 expensive.”

And then came the call that really changed his life. He’d met Rick Baker, who was already well on his way to becoming Hollywood’s leading craftsman with special effects makeup.

Baker was going to make a music video, one that was expected to be kind of special. Did Lawrence want in on it? Yes, he did.

So Lawrence joined the crew that spent eight weeks creating zombies for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

“We didn’t know who the dancers were going to be,” he said, “so we had to make all the masks and acrylic teeth ahead of time, then fit them when the dancers got there.

“Michael was there all the time,” he said. “He was very polite, the consummate professional. But he’d be off in the corner by himself, working out moves.”

The five or six in the makeup crew also got to turn themselves into non-dancing zombies. Watch the video and you’ll see Lawrence. He’s the heavy bald one patterned after Tor Johnson in the cult classic “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” (Watch the music video.)

The video went on to change music videos, Michael Jackson went on to become … Michael Jackson, and Lawrence went on to work in a long list of movies, TV shows and commercials.

Sometimes it was still monsters, but for other films it was something as benign as stars twinkling in the night sky for “Mystic Pizza.”

Through all his work, though, Lawrence is always careful not to simply say “I did that.”

“There were too many people involved in anything for one person to get credit,” he said. “You start off working small and fast. We’d make clay models for Shrek, and Jeffrey Katzenberg [the producer] would walk by saying ‘No, no, no, that’s one’s close.’

Tim Lawrence makes plaster impressions of the paw of M'Shoni's, a 350-pound lion at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens.

“And then we’d start again.”                                                             

There were the Scoleri Brothers, the dead criminals in “Ghostbusters II.” He was asked to come up with what they looked like, but the only description he got was a script that said “Big in life, bigger in death, the Scoleri Brothers erupt into the courtroom.”

“I knew that Dan Aykroyd wrote it for him and John Belushi,” Lawrence said. “So I figured I’d made one tall and thin and the other short and fat.”

If you’ve seen the film, it looks like the ghostly brothers were completely animated, but Lawrence said they were actually actors filmed and special-effected into looking like ghosts. And he was the short, fat one — under 80 pounds of costume, of course.

He’s taken part in some movies that he hasn’t even seen.

“The first 10 years,” he said, “I went to the movies four or five times a week to see my work and everyone else’s. But after a while, you quit. You’re the magician; you know the tricks. And all you can see are the faults.”

And when his mother started dying from breast cancer, and then his father struggled with Alzheimer’s, Lawrence came home.

“When the folks get sick,” he said, “there’s not a whole lot you can do. I shut down my operation there and came home. But it was worth it. My father got hot meals every day and got to stay in his home.”

He still thinks he may go back. In the meantime, he’s teaching himself new skills on the computer, and he’s working on his children’s books.

And he still puts some of his old skills to work, volunteering at Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. When an animal is knocked out for some other medical procedure, he drives up and takes a plaster casting of its paws or its ears. In time, the zoo will make bronze castings of them to put out around the zoo.

“There’s nothing like putting your head next to the chest of a 300-pound lion,” Lawrence said, “and hearing its heart.”

And that is not make- believe.

“Zombieland” keeps the movie genre alive

Alex Pham – LATimes

Zombie movies are pretty straightforward. There are zombies. To survive, you have to kill them. The only surprise is in how you go about it. You’d think Hollywood would get tired of cranking out these films more than 40 years after “Night of the Living Dead.”

But like the zombies themselves, the genre never dies thanks to die-hard fans such as David McRae, a San Diego food service worker who came to watch sneak peaks of “Zombieland” this afternoon at Comic-Con. “There’s a big thrill in survival zombie movies,” McRae explained.

For “Zombieland,” the thrill lies in its witty script and its cast, which includes Woody Harrelson as a roughneck zombie hunter named Tallahasse who snuffs zombies with the zest of a professional exterminator. When not obsessed with Twinkies, Harrelson’s character takes a demented pride in the variety of his technique that is reminiscent of his role in “Natural Born Killers.”

“I thought this was going to be a silly zombie movie,” Harrelson said of why he took the part. “Reading it, I thought it was riveting. It’s a page-turner.”

Of course, if the dialogue fails to win the crowd, there’s always zombie killing as a source of endless creative possibilities (see Sony’s trailer above).

Said an approving McRae, “This is the first time I’ve seen someone fighting zombies in an amusement park.”

Quentin Tarantino Gives Filmmaker Advice

Quentin Tarantino offers advice to young filmmakers at Comic-Con.  

Twilight Volturi Vamp Noot Seear Gets a New Moon Lesson in Model Behaviour

Kristen Stewart, Noot Seear and Robert Pattinson

Nadya Vlassoff – TheDeadBolt.com

The freshest Twilight face to grace the New Moon media blitz is model Noot Seear who will battle Robert Pattinson and the Volturi clan of reformed bloodsuckers as Heidi, one of the villainous Volturi vampires. New Moon, the second film in the Twilight Saga, has caused a Twilight stir in the acting community with its popularity and internet buzz, which is a major Twilight acting coup for the career of the young model turned actress.

New Moon which was filmed in Vancouver, BC, was the perfect location for Seear to land a role among other Twilight Saga hopefuls since Noot was born and raised the picturesque Canadian city until moving to New York at age 14 to pursue an modeling and acting career.

Noot Seear will now be gracing the silver screen instead of the runways of Armani and Yves St. Laurent as she amps up her acting game in the Twilight sequel. In a recent interview with Women’s Wear Daily, New Moon director Chris Weitz spoke on the decision to cast Seear because of her versatility. “It’s rare to find a stunningly attractive person who also happens to have the ability to act.”

Noot Seear had her own words of wisdom for Women’s Wear Daily when comparing the acting and modeling worlds where looks can be equally important. “Modeling was great to me,” Said the New Moon Volturi Heidi. “What makes acting different is that you get a voice. You’re not just a picture.” That may be true but we’re that Seear’s Twilight presence in New Moon will attract an even wider male Twilight Saga audience once pictures of Heidi hit the web.

In New Moon, Heidi is the Volturi hunter in charge of luring prey back to the clan’s castle. The New Moon role is small, especially since filming in Italy for New Moon only took two weeks, but it will be a good Twilight starting point for Noot Seear if she hopes to make inroads into the acting world.

Catch Noot Seear in New Moon when the Twilight Saga sequel hits theaters on November 20, 2009.

James Cameron, Peter Jackson talk future of film

Peter Jackson

Sandy Cohen – AP

“Titanic.” “Lord of the Rings.” “Aliens.” “King Kong.” “The Terminator.”

The men behind those movies, James Cameron and Peter Jackson, are among modern film’s special-effects kings, advancing technology in computer-generated imagery, motion-capture photography and 3-D.

They met up at Comic Con Friday for an hourlong discussion moderated by Entertainment Weekly about the future of film, sharing details on their latest projects, their high-tech hopes and the undiminished allure of original, character-driven stories.

James Cameron

The two filmmakers say they inspired each other. Cameron said it was the artistic use of “humanoid CG” in Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films that got him rolling on “Avatar,” set for release Dec. 18.

Jackson has said that the technology he used was borne out of Cameron’s CGI work on “The Abyss” and “Terminator 2.”

Both are thrilled by the possibilities of 3-D and plan to convert their biggest hits, “Titanic” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, into the format. Then they lamented the shortage of 3-D screens.

“There will be a lot more 3-D screens when they know the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films are going to be available,” Cameron said.

The movie industry needs 3-D, he said, to inspire originality and boost its bottom line. A “3-D ecosystem” could be built on big films converting to the format.

“If ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Titanic’ are available in 3-D, that sends a signal all the way back to the consumer electronics manufacturers: Make the screens, make the modified Blue Ray DVD players so you can have it in your home,” Cameron said.

That would reinvigorate sagging DVD sales, which would give studios the financial flexibility to take more risks on original and boundary-pushing material.

“The film industry is in this weird state of falling box office, or so the studios feel; DVDs are down, internet piracy, and it’s in a fragile state,” Jackson said. “It feels like the entire industry is playing a defensive game at the moment.”

Both men continue with high-tech pursuits outside of feature films. Jackson is developing a “King Kong” attraction for Universal theme parks that surrounds visitors with 3-D images and effects. Eight projectors will beam images onto giant screens surrounding the park tram, which will be stationed on a surface that shimmies and shakes with action as Kong battles a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The ride is set to open next summer, he said.

Cameron, meanwhile, is developing a company to expand the use of performance-capture technology, 3-D photography and digital projection for sports and music events.

“It could change the way we absorb music,” he said.                                              

But their first love is film, even without all the technical trappings.

The medium is “infinitely superior to any other” because of its emotional core, not its fancy dressing, Jackson said.

“The whole thing about the future of movies and technology is, to me, it’s just a huge red herring, because movies are all about story and character,” Jackson said. “They always have been and that’s all that they’re ever going to be about.”

21 Qs With ‘New Moon’ Director Chris Weitz

Katie Bain – Hollywood.com
Chris Weitz is the, um, male director with the epic task of bringing the achingly romantic New Moon to the big screen. He explains how — plus, his thoughts on taking on the fourth installment, Breaking Dawn.

What was your interest in coming on board a franchise like this, that has predominantly been more popular with women than with men?

Chris Weitz: Actually, in that regard, my brother and I often end up doing movies whose predominant audience is either women or whose kind of tipping point of success relies on a female audience. Even American Pie.

In as much as the Twilight series has a global appeal to women, I think it reflects that it really concentrates on the emotions of the central character and romance. And I think that’s something unfortunately that the studio system has not been very good at getting boys to be interested in. They think, maybe correctly, that all the male gender is interested in is things blowing up, and robots and that sort of stuff. I don’t really think that’s true. I certainly didn’t make this movie with an eye towards only girls or women being interested in seeing it. There’s a lot for diverse audiences, including older audiences.

But really, frankly, I was drawn to the cast and I thought that the central cast was great, and I wanted to work with them. And it also sort of employed some skills I had picked up along the way, including working with special effects, working with younger actors and working on kind of emotionally-centered stories.

Twilight, as you said, is very emotional, and of course, it’s got a lot of CG elements and action elements. Would you say that you’re in a comfort zone? Is this familiar ground for you? Obviously your early work was very character-driven.

CW: I’m never really in a comfort zone making a movie. I’m in a discomfort zone, because you’re always kind of working under pressurized circumstances because you don’t have an unlimited amount of time or money to do these things, but there were a number of things I was quite familiar with, and familiar enough so that I could do what I think is really important, which is not to foreground the special effects or the action elements, but to make those settle into the story. You never really want someone to watch a movie and say, “”Wow, those were great special effects.”" You hope that they don’t notice the majority of what you’re actually doing.

Obviously, people are going to notice horse-sized wolves and realize on some level that they’re special effects, but they’re photo-realistic and they should be as expressive as a good actor if possible. So in terms of kind of wrangling that sort of process, yeah, it is something that I’m used to.

When we were on set and talked to the producer, he was like, “”Yeah, we’re still working on some of the designs for the Wolf Pack,”" then I think it was two weeks or three weeks later we saw the first trailer and that great shot [of the wolf] at the end. Is this the quickest you’ve ever worked?

CW: It is. I myself was surprised that Phil Tippett’s company was able to turn out that wolf shot. And I think they kind of did that as a matter of institutional pride that they could. Even that shot that was in the trailer has gone through 20, 30 iterations since then, but they have done a really extraordinary job. Phil Tippett is a complete genius. He was responsible for the walkers in Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, and he’s kind of one of the legends of the visual effects community. And it has been really amazing what they’ve been able to do on very short notice.

We’re working on kind of breakneck speed, at the same time as really trying to achieve something quite elegant as well. And it’s not just Tippett, it’s also Frantic Studios as well, which is headed up by Mike Fink, who is my old friend who was the visual effects supervisor on Golden Compass, which won the Oscar the year that it came out. So, yeah, we’re working very fast, but we’re also trying to work as beautifully as possible to make the effects kind of settle into the really amazing cinematography that Javier Aguirresarobe brought us. We’re kind of moving at light speed, but still trying to deliver something that’s very elegant and beautiful.

Can you tell us about how far along you are to completion right now?

CW: Well, let me see. I am about two weeks away from showing my director’s cut to the studio. I’ve got some wolves with fur, and some wolves are still invisible [laughs] … basically. Some wolves are still kind of like, you’ve probably all see the ones that are kind of claymation versions. We are still in the late R & D [research and development] phases of what Edward looks like when he’s hit with sunlight, what the vampires look like when they’re hit with sunlight, the diamond effect and also kind of the hallucinatory effect that Bella has when she hears Edward’s voice, and she imagines him.

Alexandre Desplat has just started working on his music for the film. And we are just starting to put together what bands are going to be on the soundtrack, so it’s kind of like keeping 10 plates spinning at once. But it’s all good because we’ve got Alexandre Desplat, who I think is one of the greatest film composers living, and because of the kind of great strength of the franchise that I inherited, a lot of people are really interested in working on the soundtrack, and we’ve got great visual effects people. That just leaves me hopefully not dropping the ball in terms of editing to gather the story.

Sounds like a lot …

CW: It is a lot. Then we’re going to Comic-Con on the 24th [correction: July 23rd] where we’re going to be showing a couple of scenes to whoever can get inside that particular auditorium. It’s a lot to be getting on with. It’s fun at the same time.

Since you mentioned the music, will Alexandre Desplat be using Carter Burwell’s theme at all, or any variation?

CW: Yes, because it’s like any franchise, there are certain things that become familiar. I suspect he’s going to transpose it in some manner, and most of the music will be entirely new to the franchise, because his style is somewhat different from Carter Burwell’s. But I think that there is some value in having some familiar — I guess the word is leitmotifs — running through the entire series.

Were you surprised with the number of acts wanting to be on the sequel? Have you had to turn anybody down?

CW: Fortunately, I’m not at the stage where I have to turn anybody down yet, because everything is still kind of up in the air. But I am surprised and pleased at some of the bands that have said that they’re interested. It’s really kind of great. The criterion will still be what’s right for the movie at that given moment. Thom Yorke is interested. We might, if we’re very lucky, be able to get Kings of Leon to do something. So it’s exciting to be able to have access to this kind of talent.

Can you talk a bit about the mini-movie Face Punch?

CW: The funny thing is, I had to come up with the name of a movie within a movie. And the first one, which I think was named in the book Crossfire, or Crosshairs, or something like that, couldn’t be cleared because it had already been used. And you’d be shocked at the number of stupid action-movie names that have been turned into movies.

I eventually turned in a list of 10 to Summit’s lawyers to see which ones they could go and clear, and Face Punch was one of two out of the 10 that could actually be cleared, and I chose that over Kill Hunt. So now somebody can go and actually make Kill Hunt, but Face Punch is ours. There was a joke between my brother that there should be a movie called Face Punch, which was just about people punching one another in the face, but it’s a kind of movie within a movie. It’s the kind of least romantic thing Bella can think of to go to, because her friend asks her essentially on a date, and she wants nothing romantic to happen at all.

Did Stephenie give you any thoughts on that?                         

CW: Well she gave me a T-shirt with the Face Punch logo on it. She’s kind of a fan of popular culture as well, the absurdity of popular culture, so I think she’s kind of tickled by the name of the movie.

Will it be on the DVD?

CW: The movie itself? [Laughs]. No. Sadly, there is no Face Punch. Maybe it’ll be something the fans will be left to make. You’ll hear the sounds of Face Punch, which will be a lot of people being shot and hacking each other to bits. There are a few other movies, imaginary movies that are referred to within this movie and the way it satirizes other genre films in a very brief and lighthearted way. This is the example of the stupid-as-possible action movie imaginable.

Was there a pressure for you in taking on a project that has become a huge pop culture phenomenon?

CW: Yeah, definitely there is. I think it’s largely self-imposed because the fans are tremendously supportive and very kind. One thing that’s interesting about the Twilight fans is that they’re not like fanboys in the sense that they start cynical. They actually begin from the point of view of being enthusiastic and wanting it to be good and to be done well.

I do feel a tremendous amount of responsibility, more to the readership than to the movie franchise in way, because I think that’s the core experience you’re trying to get at. The experience of someone reading the books for the first time, or the second or third, fourth time just kind of galloping through it the way that one reads books when you’re younger and you’re completely absorbed in it. To try to provide an experience that kind of compliments that. So that meant kind of keeping very good touch with Stephenie, without trying to second-guess oneself, always thinking about things with a degree of loyalty to the fans.

What was your favorite scene to film?

CW: There were a lot of fun scenes to film, frankly. I really did enjoy the scenes in the Volturi headquarters, although it’s a tremendous logistical headache. In a way, it’s the scenes that you dread the most, because they are so time-consuming and you have to get it just right, which is like the stuff in the Volturi headquarters, or the stuff that was shot in Montepulciano. I suppose that has to be my favorite scene, because it’s kind of the highpoint of the movie, when Bella goes to try to stop Edward from killing himself.

We had 1,000 extras in this medieval town square in a hill town in Tuscany in the most beautiful country on Earth. It’s just such an extraordinary opportunity to get to work there, and it was also kind of surreal because every Twilight fan who could make it from all over continental Europe and further had gotten by hook or by crook to Montepulciano and booked a hotel room, sometimes at the very hotel at which the cast and crew were staying. And so there was this kind of weird Beatle-mania sort of thing going on in this small, beautiful hill town, and so for five days it was kind of this bizarre festival atmosphere. And it really wasn’t bothersome at all. It was incredibly gratifying that all these people would applaud after every single take. Whether or not we had screwed it up. They had no idea because they weren’t close enough to hear, but if you look down any alley down which the camera wasn’t pointing, you’d see hundreds of these young girls who’d come to kind of just touch a piece of what they really loved.

Can you talk about what it was like who had all sort of established these characters, and to come in as a new director. Did you learn anything by talking to anyone else, or did you just sort of go your own way?

CW: I think that I always actually go into any movie knowing that a confident actor is probably going to know as much if not more of what their character is about than I will, even if it isn’t a franchise because that’s their job, but it’s especially the case when they’ve played these characters falling in love. They’ve kind of lived with these characters as well as with the franchise for quite awhile.

My first job was to ask them what they thought of the script and what they thought their characters would be up to and to kind of work along with them. Obviously, it was going to be a different experience for them, it’s going to be a different kind of movie because in a way I’m much more old-fashioned than Catherine Hardwicke in terms of my film taste and in terms of the way the film was going to turn out. So it was sort of a balancing act between respecting everything that they brought to the table knowing the characters as well as they did, and what I thought that I could bring.

And also it was great to be with Taylor Lautner as he went from a character who had three small scenes in the first movie, he only worked three days in the first movie or something like that, to one of the dominant characters in the movie. That was really, really, a really fun process, also because he’s a great guy. All of the kids, as I like to call them, because I’m 39 and that kind of makes me twice their age, were fun to work with and clever and smart and thoughtful about it.

Talking about the proposal scene at the end of the book. Fans are worried that that might have been altered or cut out for the film. Can you address those concerns?

CW: It hasn’t been cut out, I can tell you that much. It’s not going to hit them in exactly the way they think it’s going to, but I will say that, I gotta put it: It’s gonna be quite special. I kind of saved all of my gusto for that moment. I don’t think it’ll disappoint.

The Volturi. Can you talk about your vision for this new group of characters?

CW: No matter how strange one of the characters is in a work of fantasy, I think you kind of have to approach them as people, and so you start to think, well, they’ve been around for 2,000 years. How would they live? How would they interact with one another? The conclusion really was that after 2,000 years, you would probably be more than mildly insane, no matter how cultured or gracious you appear on the surface.

I think that’s what Michael Sheen really managed to convey in portraying Aro, the head of the Volturi, which is that on the surface, he’s terribly gracious, warm, a wonderful host, and yet at the same time he’s absolutely lethal and frightening, and it’s also kind of what Dakota Fanning kind of conveys as Jane. She’s this, in appearance, very innocent-looking, harmless-looking almost kind of a teenager, but she’s absolutely deadly.

The first thing I wanted to do was to put them in a setting that wasn’t sort of Dracula’s castle. Because I feel that’s been done, there have been so many vampire movies and werewolf movies and horror movies where everything is dreary and dark and everything is blue or green, and instead for their headquarters to be surprisingly light and crisp, and then the characters that they play have kind of a tactile reality to them, in spite of how kind of bizarre their situation is. And the whole point is not to leave kind of Forks, Wash. where everything has been very realistic, and then suddenly go to a location that completely throws you out of the movie.

So that’s kind of a difficult balance to achieve. And the set, although it’s huge and grand and magnificent, actually kind of feels like a real place. One always has the option in these kinds of situations of shooting everything in green screen and adding the set later, and I’ve done that before, but in this case, it felt really important to actually build something that surrounded the characters, that they could interact with and that had a real sense of existing in in actual space.

There’s a lot of fan speculation about what the Volturi will actually look like, and from what we’ve read and seen, they’re really off the mark. Will we see the Volturi in any of the upcoming trailers or publicity stills, or will that be top secret until the movie is released?

CW: I think they’ll be some publicity stills coming out about them eventually. I’m not sure whether they’ll be in the trailers or not. I think, essentially, our aim was to make them look like what it says they look like in the book and not to be too fancy about it. It was very important to [Stephenie] that the werewolves transform very quickly and that they look like wolves, that we not have this kind of magical Lon Cheney-esque long transformation, and I think the reason behind that is to make sense of their reality. And I think that that was important to the Volturi as well. That they’re not levitating above the ground. They’re not surrounded by mystical auras, they are creatures who actually exist, and they’re very specific, they’re very stylish, they’re very elegant, they’re very dangerous. But essentially, it’s fairly faithful to the book.

Would you talk about all these rumors or fan speculation or hopes that you might come back to direct Breaking Dawn? And if anything is being talked about now or if there’s even any carryover between Eclipse to Breaking Dawn in terms of planning?

CW: I think it’s really charming that not having seen New Moon, people would be enthusiastic about me wanting to do Breaking Dawn. I think the proof is in the pudding, and they should see New Moon before they decide they want me to have anything else to do with their series. But I would hope to earn that kind of rumor.

I haven’t really spoken with Summit about that. All I knew was that I was going to be too tired to do Eclipse and that it was better that somebody else take it over as well so that they could put their own imprint on it, and also kind of the way the films are being shot would have precluded it anyway, but in terms of the planning, David Slade came in while we were shooting the end of New Moon, and I showed him everything that I could to kind of give him a sense of what direction we were going.

He’s going to do whatever way he wants to because he’s his own guy and will have his own style and particular take on things, but just as I was inheriting certain things from Catherine Hardwicke, he’s going to inherit certain things from me and make a choice as to if he wants to keep them or alter them. Tippett is going to do the wolves for Eclipse, so there’s a continuity in terms of the look of the werewolves and obviously the cast is going to remain the same. So Dakota is Jane and all the Volturi are the same people that we’re familiar with, but other than that, it’s kind of David Slade’s show to run on Eclipse. By the time that comes out they’ll probably want him to do Breaking Dawn, not me.

But for the time being everybody wants you to do it.

CW: It’s kind of like, you know, yes, I have unlimited potential at the moment.

So you would make all the fans happy by saying you would consider.

CW: I would certainly consider it. It’s funny. I spend all my time avoiding the Internet because I don’t want to get — I end up getting into arguments with 15-year-olds in Germany, and it’s kind of like I’ve got to concentrate on making the movie, so I don’t even know the positive rumors out there. I don’t know the negative rumors; I don’t know the positive rumors; I’m just trying to do the best job I can, but it’s really sweet that people would like me to do that. I think that’s very cool.

Do you think that Breaking Dawn would be very doable?

CW: No, it’s a tough one. I mean, yes, it’s doable. Anything is doable. It’s a hard one, because the series gets more and more ambitious as it goes along. Yes, it’s doable; anything is doable.

What’s your drop date that you have to turn the film in to the studio before opening?

CW: Ironically, I think it’s the day before Halloween. I believe October 30 is our drop date. When it’s time to start striking the prints or we’re in big trouble.