Producer Thomas Tull talks Godzilla, Dracula and Pacific Rim 2

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

In a recent interview with Collider, Legendary Pictures founder and CEO Thomas Tull spilled some details on a couple of films we are really looking forward to around these parts with GODZILLA and the upcoming origin story of DRACULA; he even shed some light on where they're at with the possibility of a PACIFIC RIM 2. Since there's a lot of cool shit to digest here, let's just jump right into it, shall we?

When asked about what he was the most excited about when it comes to GODZILLA, Tull says:

I think what I’m most excited about is all the principles that we laid out in the beginning, I feel like we were able to hit on those things. All I can tell you is when I watch the movie, which is I don’t know how many times I’ve done now with editing and everything, I walk out giddy just because I feel like that’s the movie that I want to see. In terms of the acting between Aaron and Lizzie and Cranston, they did an amazing job. Gareth is going to have a very long and prosperous career, and when the big guy shows up I get goose bumps, so hopefully the rest of the world feels the same way. That’s how I feel about it.

One of the biggest questions fans had when a new GODZILLA was announced was whether or not director Gareth Edwards would be able to pull off such an epic film. Tull talks about his reasoning behind the choice, and I think after seeing the trailers we can all agree that it was the right one:

I would say a couple of things, when you watch Monsters you understand that the effects he did on his laptop were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, I was astounded. I was astounded by the way he- you can tell by the camera placement and everything, and holding tension, before somebody explained to me who did it and how much they spent and everything I just thought this is remarkable I want to meet this guy. So I called him in and as you can imagine in our little ecosystem of Hollywood more than a few people said to me, “That’s kind of a crazy thing to go from that level of film and then hand over Godzilla“, but his previous work was amazing. You cant teach what this guy does. We’ve had the same thing- I’m not putting him yet in this category, he has to earn this, but I’m saying when you’re allowing Chris Nolan or Del Toro or any of these guys that are master craftsman, you can just tell, and with Gareth he has a ways to go before we have that conversation, but that confidence you can just feel it. On the other hand, instead of just being technical about it, he just lit up. We would talk about our favorite shots in Jaws and how you could create tension around the monster, and then he had this great idea that he was talking about, he had this thing in his head, it’s not in the movie, but where Godzilla would be getting closer and when we’d have the roar he could imagine a soldier counting, “one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand” like thunder it was getting closer. I thought that was cool as hell, so I just loved that. And I told him how important the roar was to me, that that signature piece needed to be classic yet our version. We just completely had a meeting of minds on it. I felt great about doing it and I feel even better now that I’ve seen what he’s done.

While we still don't know a whole lot about the upcoming DRACULA film, Tull goes on to say how Luke Evans plays the iconic character in a "unique" way. Sounds interesting!

Luke Evans, who we believe is a really good actor, he was in Clash of the Titans for us, plays Dracula in a way that’s kind of unique. It’s an origin story and it’s something that we read and thought was really good.

And finally, Tull briefly touched on where they were at with the status of PACIFIC RIM 2 considering how much of a massive hit it was overseas:

It did north of 400 million dollars globally and both the home video sales and the merchandise have way over-indexed, so it seems like fans really loved the world. So we’re going to sit down with Guillermo and as long as we think it’s authentic and there’s something to say, we’re certainly open to it.

There you have it, folks, some exciting details on a few projects we're really pumped about here at AITH!