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Archived News
August - December 2005
December 11, 2005
Scarlett Johanson in talks for The Prestige
With pre-production nearing its end, Scarlett Johansson is in negotiations to star in The Prestige. Johanson would play a magician's assistant named Olivia who is sent to spy on the competition.
October 22, 2005
Batman Begins DVD, Nolan talks in-depth about Begins
Well, the DVD is out a couple of days already thought I add a DVD entry to the Batman page. There is a very interesting interview with Chris Nolan over at BoxOfficeMojo, where he talks about the themes and ideas behind Batman, about working at Warner Bros, the Batman DVD, what kind of other films he would like to do and a lot more... Recommended read!
October 16, 2005
Nolan talks about Batman DVD, sequel & The Prestige
Chris Nolan recently talked with About.com. Although he remained very cautious about mentioning any details on the Batman sequel, he confirmed that he is in talks with Jackman and Bale for the Prestige and talks quite a bit about his interests in making this film. Another interesting aspect is his regard for documenting his own filmmaking progress
Did Christian Bale show up for his audition looking like The Machinist?
Funny enough, yes he did. Well, yes and no, as I say. My first meeting with him was right before he was going off to shoot it and he weighed very little. He then lost some more during the shooting but he was pretty damn skinny, which didn’t distract me from the sense of purpose he got in his eyes, that great focus that I think Bruce Wayne needed. So I was impressed but I was very worried that when he turned up for his screen test right after finishing The Machinist, the studio was going to think I lost my mind screen testing a 90 pound Batman. But he turned up for that screen test having put on all of the weight he ever lost. He came in at 180 pounds or something.
The fans love it and it got great reviews, but it’s safe to say the Academy won’t be nominating Batman Begins. How can we get to the point where a comic book movie is considered as special as a historical drama?
I have to say, it would be churlish of me to complain in any way about the way in which Batman Begins has been received. My assumption was that if we made a sincere effort to make a great film and not in any way sell the material short as being just a comic book movie or just a superhero movie, then we’d get a lot of credit for that. I think we have. As far as talking about awards and things like that, that’s a whole other world. It is whatever it is. But I think in terms of the way the audiences have received Batman Begins, I think we’ve actually had a lot of credit from audiences for respecting the material and really trying to put something great on screen and the film has played all the way through the summer. We’re still on a couple of hundred screens now. Like I said, I couldn’t really complain about the film being ghettoized because I think actually we have been able to play well beyond the core audience who turned out the first couple of weeks.
The comic book menu system on the DVD is very reminiscent of the Memento special edition. Why do you like to make DVD menus a challenge?
Well, I think for me, it’s really about the opportunity that the DVD format gives you to engage with the viewer in a manner that has some relation to the feel of the film. In the case of Memento which my brother designed the menus for, we really were looking for something that would be challenging and puzzling in the way that the narrative of the film had been. In the case of Batman Begins which wasn’t my idea to do the comic interface but I thought it was a great idea and I was very happy that they did it, because I think it’s just a marvelous tribute to the source material, the source medium if you like, that we were drawing from in making the film. I’m especially pleased with the two disc set. There are three of our comic book sources, some really historic comics that have been reprinted by the D.C. guys, which I think is a great tribute, a great looking back to the essence of the original source material and where does Batman come from.
What do you think of Tankman Begins?
I thought it was hilarious. I actually had not had a chance to see it when it first aired. It was really only in preparing the DVD that I was able to take a look at it. I just thought it was hilarious. They did such a great job of matching in with our existing footage. The amazing skill of the guys who put that together, so I’m pretty pleased to have that on the DVD.
How much time do you take out of the schedule to do the DVD interviews?
I don’t take any time out of the schedule to do it. What I do, because I’m in the thick of things, I do some interviews in pre-production, and then while we’re shooting, I try and just allow them to shoot me on set and capture the odd word or whatever. But then when we’re in post production, I’ve got a bit more time on my hands and a bit more perspective. Then I’ll go and do another set of interviews and that’s where the material is drawn from. To me, it’s the best way of doing it, talking about our ambition for the film before we shoot it and then having got it in the can and knowing a bit more how it was going to work, talk about what we actually went through.
Is it important to you to have that historical record of the filmmaking process?
It’s very important. For selfish reasons purely, I just think it’s marvelous that you can have a format which will record all of this information about everyone who worked on the film and where we shot the film, how we did things. I like to think that for a certain segment of the audience, hopefully a large one, there’s a lot of fascination with that kind of material too. Certainly as a movie buff, a movie fan myself, I’ve always been pretty interested to see that material, how things have actually been achieved. In terms of Batman Begins for example, I was very pleased with the amount of footage of the Batmobile in development they were able to put on there because that’s something I think no one’s ever really seen before.
Will you be doing Batman Continues?
Well, it certainly won’t be called that. That’s the title most commonly thrown at me. Actually, I have been talking to the studio and to David Goyer about directions for a sequel because we’re certainly very excited still about the world we were able to dive into and the characters we were able to put on screen. It’s a pretty interesting bunch of people and an interesting place, so we’re definitely talking about places we would take it.
Will you use two villains again or is the Joker going to be enough?
I wouldn’t want to talk about any specifics per se. All I can really say is it’s a film we’re talking about doing.
Boy, I had questions about Robin and Vicki Vale too.
Like I said, I can’t really go into details.
The first time around, the studio sort of lost track of the Batman franchise. Do you have a sense they won’t make the same mistake this time?
Well, to me it’s more about the filmmakers and their collaboration with the studio. I don’t think you can necessarily lay all the blame at the feet of the studio or all the blame at the feet of the filmmakers. With franchise properties, with the idea of sequels, as I see it, the only reason to do a sequel is to do something better than the film you’ve made before. That’s the reason you have to be doing it, with that kind of intention. That’s the only way in which I would enter into the process.
Let me try a philosophical way of asking: Could Robin be introduced without dumbing down the series?
Possibly, but I can’t really talk about specifics.
Tell me about The Exec.
Well, that’s a project my brother is writing for me to direct. It’s a massive film, so it’s some way off. The film we’re actually doing next is a different script of his that we’ve collaborated on called The Prestige. We’ve just gone into preproduction on that and we start shooting in January.
What’s The Prestige about?
It’s about two magicians at the turn of the century in London who engage into this deadly rivalry. We’re in negotiations for Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale to star as these two magicians.
Is The Prestige based on a true story?
No, it’s based on a novel by Christopher Priest. It’s a pretty fascinating world and something that’s never really been seen before in films actually which makes it kind of exciting.
It’s a bit smaller than Batman was but I think equally compelling.
Does The Prestige have a hook like Memento?
There are plenty of hooks, yes. I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about it yet because I haven’t made it yet, so we’re still finding it. For me, the main hook is really the extraordinary world of magic at a time when magicians were really the premiere entertainers. A lot of the things really in a funny sort of way were the precursor to cinema and a lot of the things they were doing are now things that happen in movies from special effects and so forth onward. So we get to create a world in which the narrative plays tricks on the audience just the way the magicians are.
October 7, 2005
The Prestige casting news
It seems like The Prestige is finally moving into production. Daily Variety reports that both Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman started negotiation to star in the film. The two will star as the two rivaling magicians, Bale as Alfred Borden and Jackman as Rupert Angier. Jackman is currently filming for the third X-Men film and will move on to the Prestige afterwards. Michael Caine has also been rumored for a role.
Emma Thomas will once again produce together with Aaron Ryder of Ray Gun Prods. Pre-Production is scheduled to begin next week (October 10th) and start of the shoot is scheduled for the second week of January 2006.
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