FirstShowing.net chatted up director Peter Segal about his new movie 'Get Smart'. They also got him talking about the comic-to-film 'Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam':
Highlights:
Q: Do you have any updates on Shazam! since we last talked?
Segal: Not a lot has happened since I spoke to you last. We're still working on the script. An interesting little development, but it's an annoying one, is that after a strike there are residual effects and one was that everyone who was a writer suddenly had a back log of assignments as did John August, so we started to do our re-write process but he had to service some of these other prior commitments. So now we're kind of waiting in line to get him back but it's worked out okay because we've been working on the marketing of this and getting this going, so we've been doing enough to keep ourselves busy and as soon as this movie gets released then we're going to focus again on 'Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam'.
Q: What's your feeling about the whole superhero marketplace these days?
Segal: The reason why I signed on to this knowing fully well that there was an 'Iron Man', at that time in the works, and all of these other comic book properties out there is because I still believe that 'Shazam' is unique. It's a different kind of story. It's not about science, it's not about a rich man and this is nothing against – my gosh, I adore Batman and Iron Man — but rich guys with problems inventing gadgets that help them fight crime. This is about magic, and it puts it more into a Harry Potter-esque kind of world and it – what I love also is the tone of it. It's Big meets Superman. And that's not like anything else out there. And especially now that there are some legal tangles with Superman as a property, it might be just the right time for Captain Marvel… Ooooh — I like the sound of that!Q: I wanted to ask because the comic book genre seems to be developing in terms of every big movie these days is usually a comic book movie in some way.
Segal: Yeah, and some are good and some are not good, and it's just like TV adaptations and it turns people off before you even have your shot because someone else screwed the pooch on theirs. Who knows how Shazam! will ultimately wind up? We're just trying to get going on it, because we know – what's been fascinating to me through this past year of the early marketing of Get Smart is to find out how many fans of Shazam! are out there. When I was on Fantastic Four eight years ago, I was concerned about Fantastic Four being still relevant. Obviously it is, but because X-Men was so much younger, that I thought, 'Will kids know? Will kids care?' And of course when the first commercial for Fantastic Four came out, my son, who was then four, said 'Hey dad! It's clobbering time.' And I thought okay, guess what, he's looking forward to a comic book that was born in the 40s, so why not one born in 1939? It's not much of a difference.
Click through for the complete Q & A...
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