‘A Cure for Wellness’ Director Gore Verbinski Fields ‘Bioshock’ and ‘Rango’ Questions in Reddit AMA
In addition to fake news, “A Cure for Wellness” is also being promoted via more conventional means, namely a reddit AMA with director Gore Verbinski. The helmer, formerly of “The Ring” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” fielded questions about the inspiration for his strange new thriller, whether “Rango” will ever receive a sequel and whatever happened to his “Bioshock” adaptation (spoiler alert: not happening anytime soon).
READ MORE: ‘A Cure for Wellness’ Is Using a New Kind of Viral Marketing: Fake News
On the “Rango” sequel:
“I don’t think so. I think that we put everything we possibly could into ‘Rango’ and I guess you never say never, but I would like to go back into animation again. But try something completely different.”
On his movie based on “Bioshock,” a popular video game:
“Well it’s no short answer to that question but we were eight weeks prior shooting when the plug was pulled. It’s an R rated movie. I wanted to keep it R rated, I felt like that would be appropriate, and it’s an expensive movie. It’s a massive world we’re creating and it’s not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. ‘A Cure For Wellness’, we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world.
“‘Bioshock’ it wouldn’t work like that, we’d be building an entire underworld universe. So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, universal just didn’t feel comfortable ultimately. At that time also there were some R rated, expensive R rated movies that were not working.
“So I think things have changed and maybe there will be another chance, but it’s very difficult when you’re eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you’ve almost filmed the entire thing, so emotionally you’re right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to.”
On what inspired “A Cure for Wellness”:
“The writer Justin Haythe and I spent quite a bit of time talking about this idea that maybe there is an ancient place, a place of wellness that is sort in the alps, in the clouds looking down on modern man and has been observing mankind go through the industrial revolution and our obsession with personal computers and cell phones and sort of offering a diagnoses, and we are both fans of Thomas Mann’s novel ‘The Magic Mountain’ and all things HP Lovecraft, and so we designed the film as sort of a summoning of Dane DeHaan’s character Lockhart and sort of this place and started to realize we’re firmly rooted in the genre and everything kind of evolved from there”
On whether he was anxious about adapting “Pirates” for Disney:
“I think that there’s something really enjoyable and slightly perverse about being told you shouldn’t do something. I suppose that goes back to everything sort of everything seditious and sense of anarchy, but really when people say you shouldn’t make a pirate movie, they haven’t worked in 30 years. It just makes you lean into it that much more when they say you don’t have to make an animated movie.
“That’s something that you just get more excited about it and certainly in the case for A Cure for Wellness where we’re sort of going into a landscape that people aren’t making movies like this anymore and I think the more the data says don’t do it the more interesting it becomes, and thank you for liking ‘Mousehunt.'”
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