In yesterday's story from the set of Will Eisner's 'The Spirit', producer Deborah Del Prete talked about shepherding the film through development hell to the Albuquerque studios where it's currently being filmed, and casting her leading man and the femmes fatales. Today talk turns to the dark side of the film...the villainous side, if you will.
In terms of casting the film's heavy, The Octopus, let's just say director Frank Miller's wish list was pretty short.
"[Samuel L. Jackson] was the only choice ever for The Octopus. If you know this comic than you know we never see The Octopus, all we see is gloves. That's not necessarily the way it is in this movie.
"Sam is the actor waiting his life to play the super villain and this is the super villain of super villains. Our Octopus is quite a psychotic character; insane is the best way I can describe him, but brilliant, brilliant scientist also. Sam is just amazing and Sam is larger than life and this is a larger than life character."
Will Eisner was considered a mentor to Frank Miller and Eisner's presence is very much felt within the film.
"We've been very careful about the type of things we think Will would want kept protected. We laugh many days about how Will would have seen this coming to life and really loved it. Frank is always considering Will throughout this, but he's still Frank Miller and it's the Frank Miller take on it. One of the things Frank will tell you is they became friends and have a life long argument over this that and the other and I think that continues on."
In order for Miller to really capture the vision of 'The Spirit' he not only kept the Will Eisner comic books on the set, but literally storyboarded out every single scene.
"Frank drew for hours and hours and hours and hours. He took some of the most important Spirit stories and made a book of all of the important Spirit stories and gave them to the art department and the actors so they could be informed by it."
Though Miller is a relatively new director, Del Prete was never hesitant about how Miller would bring Eisner's 'The Spirit' to life.
"One of the interesting things when we first got involved, I spent a lot of time talking to (Robert) Rodriguez, and he said one of the surprising things is that he's great with actors, unbelievable with actors. He really understands actors and what to give them. The man is probably one of the most visionary people out there today. His sensibility of what belongs on screen is way advanced for someone who might consider an early director. It's amazing."
'The Spirit' will be released in January of 2009. Until then, keep tuning in to Comics2Film for more information on the film as it becomes available.
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