Steve Weintroub of Collider.com conducted an interview recently with
Priest producer Mike De Luca. De Luca also discussed his upcoming projects, including
Ghost Rider 2 and a new
Fright Night.
When asked how filming the much anticipated TokyoPop comic adaptaion
Priest turned out, he had this to say:
"It really was a blast. It was really fun. Again, it was kind of this great genre blend of a vampire movie but also Road Warrior and also The Searchers and it was kind of like a pseudo-western in a good sense of the word. So we had…it was a good genre blend. We had fun with that one. Paul Bettany is a wonderful, wonderful actor and brought real credibility to the role in what I hope is the first of many, but I’m very impressed with Scott Stewart as a director and also the partnership with Screen Gems and with Josh Donen, who also works with Sam Raimi and David Fincher here at Columbia, it was just a good gang all the way around. Everyone got the movie. Everybody was excited about making the same kind of movie and I think it brings yet another variation of the vampire mythology to the screen in an original way. These vampires are not brooding or romantic. They’re another species. They’re feral. They’re much more predatory and they’re more a return to like a monster movie as opposed to anything gothic or romantic."
A lot of fans are wondering how soon a trailer for the film will be released, especially considering principle photography wrapped several months ago.
"I guess working backwards from an August release which is what they’re targeting, you’d probably see materials at the end of the first quarter. You know, there may be stuff…ideally you’d want the trailer up in February, March, April like with those movies. You usually start 3 months behind the release-maybe 4 months behind release. There [will] be a Comic-Con presentation."
And what about sequel news? De Luca was more than willing to give us his insight on the franchise process:
"We submitted the spec script to Screen Gems. Clint Culpepper flipped over it and said to us, this is a franchise. He loved the image of the guy with the cross tattooed on his face. Like it really just sold him on how he could sell the movie. And he’s been its biggest champion and was excited about it from the beginning."
I am not overly familiar with the comic, but the movie is starting to attract my attention. What do you think?
Could this be worthy of a franchise?