I must admit that I am unfamiliar with Mark Millar’s comic-book WANTED, but all signs are pointing to “GET familiar with it, numbskull!” the more I read about it – and the more I hear about the film adaptation that will be coming our way early next year.
It’s being helmed by Timur Bekmambetov. No not THAT Timur Bekmambetov, the OTHER one – the dude who directed NIGHT WATCH and DAY WATCH .
He had a few words about WANTED with MTV Movie News and he’s obviously got grand visions in his head for this extravaganza.
“It’s a comic book movie, but it looks real. For me, it’s the same experience as ‘Night Watch’ and ‘Day Watch’ because what we are trying to do is tell a fantasy story with real drama and without conventions. Every time, we are undercutting it with reality.”
WANTED tells the story of a working-class young man named Wesley who learns his late father was part of a super-villain alliance called the Fraternity. Now Wesley discovers he has his evil father’s abilities, and begins putting them to use, with the help of some tutors. Essentially, our protagonist is a bad guy.
Concerning lead actors James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie (who will play Wesley’s accomplice), Bekmambetov says, “Angelina has a lot of interesting dramatic moments with James. They will love each other, and they will hate each other. She’s a teacher who will bring James into this world and teach him how to be different, be a killer.”
“This is ‘Night Watch’ and ‘Day Watch’ but four times together. It’s much, much bigger. We built a huge textile factory in Prague. … The production designer, John Myhre, made ‘X-Men,’ ‘Chicago’ and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha.’ He’s built this huge set, and we’ve created a mythology in this world of weavers.”
Now the director gets into “what the f*ck” territory – for people who haven’t read the comics, that is – as he describes an even MORE secret world than that of the super-villains. “We will create a world, and then we will destroy this world. The hero will discover the whole world. It looks ordinary, but it’s not. It’s an industrial world filled with weaving machines, lots of traps, lot of looms flying back and forth and predicting the future. The looms weave these fabrics, and the fabrics have a pattern, like a binary code, that has information. The weavers can read the fabric — they see the structure of it and they can read its messages. Then they know who has to be killed to keep the balance of the world.”
Is this on some MATRIX-tip? I don’t know what the man’s going on about – but I likes it! Sounds pretty ambitious, and based on his “WATCH” flicks, I’m certainly reserving a seat in which I shall park my ass when WANTED comes out (he predicts) March ‘08.
If a better picture has ever been taken… freakin’ send it to me!