First Photos: Tarsem's Immortals
Rogue Pictures has released the first photos from Tarsem Singh's new Greek mythology epic Immortals.
Relativity Media paid mid-six against seven figures for the script by Charley and Vlas Parlapanides. Sleeper Code/Machine Gun Preacher scribe Jason Keller penned the most recent draft of the script. Warner Bros had toyed around with the idea of buying the Immortals script for their remake of Clash of the Titans. Obviously, Clash was the first to go into production. Here is the previously released logline:
"A purported bastard who retains an allegiance to his mother despite the fact that he longs to join the quest of a king who is battling demons in ancient Greece later embarks on a grail of discovery that has him finding he is the king's son and also fated to become his country's greatest hero as he leads the successful war against long-imprisoned Titans who are hoping to use the demons to restore their power."
Stephen Dorff (Blade, Public Enemies) will play Stavros, "a master thief who joins Theseus on his quest to help free Greece from the dark threat of the Titans." Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto plays Phaedra, an oracle priestess who must join Theseus (played by Henry Cavill) on his quest to prevent the cataclysmic war from erupting. Mickey Rourke will play King Hyperion and Twilight's Kellan Lutz will play Poseidon. John Hurt will play Zeus, Isabel Lucas is Athena, "the daughter of Zeus who finds her loyalty tested as the war between the gods and Titans looms." The film also co-stars Luke Evans and Joseph Morgan.
The photos come from the six behind the scenes video journals released so far on IAmRogue: one, two, three, four, five, and six. Tarsem explains what we might expect from the action scenes in the film:
"I'm trying to define it like... The Gods are like superheroes so we can kind of like Batman does, not Superman, where you jump from up high and not get hurt when landing down. But he can't fly up. So we have the same definition for Gods." ... "The movie's got fantastical fighting and it's got a bit Oldboy meets Caravaggio kind of stuff. And it also has this, which is just brutal and two people in a confined space."
Singh previously told Empire:
"It's turning into, basically, Caravaggio meets Fight Club," he said. "It's a really hardcore action film done in Renaissance painting style. I want to see how that goes; it's turned into something really cool. This guy who I really love, who's the only one person in it right now, is the brother in The Tudors, Henry Cavill. I'm going for a very contemporary look on top of that so I'm kind of going with, you know, Renaissance time with electricity. So it's a bit like Baz Luhrman doing Romeo + Juliet in Mexico; it's just talking a particular Greek tale and half contemporising it and telling it."
The Montreal Gazette has once claimed that pre-production was put on hold while producers considered the possibility of shooting the movie in 3D in the wake of Avatar's amazing success. But there has been no mention of 3D in the Hollywood Trades. The cameras int he video blogs appear to be traditional film cameras and not 3D rigs, so we assume that 3D conversion will be done in post.
Tarsem is an Indian-born music video director ("Hold On" by En Vogue, "Sweet Lullaby" by Deep Forest and "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.), became acclaimed in the world of commercial directors, and made his feature film directorial debut with The Cell, followed by the 2006 film The Fall. He is known for his incredibly visual imagery and art direction. If you haven't seen any of his films, check out the trailer for The Fall embedded below:
Universal Pictures will release the film on November 11th 2011.
via: Playlist