{"id":3,"date":"2010-06-15T22:56:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T06:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wormholeriders.net\/MovieM\/?p=3"},"modified":"2021-07-17T22:20:22","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T05:20:22","slug":"prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-wondercon-2010-panel-with-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wormholeriders.net\/MovieM\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – WonderCon 2010 Panel with Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings, SciFi\/Fantasy Movie Fans!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Disney<\/a>I am very excited to share one of my most memorable experiences from WonderCon 2010<\/a> in San Francisco, a Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time<\/a> panel featuring the fabulously beautiful Jake Gyllenhaal<\/a>, producer Jerry Bruckheimer<\/a>, director Mike Newell<\/a>, and creator of one of the most beloved adventure games ever, Jordan Mechner<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"PoP-Panelists\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition to producing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Jerry Bruckheimer<\/strong> produced the hugely popular Pirates of the Caribbean<\/a> films as well as a few others you may have heard of (National Treasure<\/a>, Beverly Hills Cop<\/a>, Top Gun<\/a>, Con Air<\/a>, Flashdance<\/a>, and many, many more).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I am fairly certain you have seen some of Mike Newell\u2019s<\/strong> work as well. He has been at the helm of an impressive number of films and television shows including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/a>, Love in the Time of Cholera<\/a>, Donnie Brasco<\/a>, and Four Weddings and a Funeral<\/a>, to name just a few.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mike<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And what can I say about Jake Gyllenhaal<\/strong>? You know him. You love him. And now he is transformed into a strong, agile action hero. Hooray! Okay, we may as well list some of his film credits as well. How about Donnie Darko<\/a>, Brokeback Mountain<\/a>, Bubble Boy<\/a>, Jarhead<\/a>, Proof<\/a>, and Rendition<\/a>, to start us off? Great performances by a very talented actor.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jake<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan Mechner, creator of the Prince of Persia video game:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jordan<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Prince of Persia panel at WonderCon 2010 was led by Geoff Boucher<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(Note: The audience LOVED these guys. We all cheered, laughed, hooted, clapped, shouted answers, and generally made lots of noise during the panel. It was great fun, but it also made for a few places where I just could not hear what the panelist was saying. Please feel free to hear appropriate enthusiastic sounds in your head as you read through the panel transcript. Enjoy!)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/em><\/p>\n

Geoff Boucher:<\/strong> How\u2019s everybody doing? Alright. Well we have a full program so we\u2019re gonna just jump right into it. How\u2019s it goint today? First we\u2019re gonna do, uh, an epic action-adventure film about a rogue prince a mysterious princess, and an ancient dagger that reverses time. Do you guys know what it is?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Audience:<\/strong> Prince of Persia!<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> You guys cheated. You looked. And, uh, the first person we\u2019re gonna bring out, this is his first convention, first comic book convention. He\u2019d never been to one before. Which is kind of amazing if you think about it because if you think of summer entertainment, you think big movies, you think Jerry Bruckheimer. So Jerry, how are you?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry Bruckheimer:<\/strong> I\u2019m great. Great be here. Thanks. Great to see everybody. My first big convention so I\u2019m really thrilled to be here.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> Tell us a little bit about Prince of Persia. I mean, just coming into it. Tell us about the property and what it means.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> Well Prince of Persia, as you all know, everybody here knows Jordan Mechner created this many years ago. It was a very famous game and we fell in love with it and decided to turn it into a big motion picture.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> And starting with a video game, there are so many different ways to go. Coming into it, what did you really want this to represent? What were your thoughts?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> Well, we certainly wanted to capture the excitement of the game and the characters of the game but yet give you a very dramatic story that has humor and drama and pathos and a wonderful lead actor.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> Well every film, I would imagine one of the first decisions you have to make right off the bat is who\u2019s gonna direct and, uh, tell us a little bit about the director of this film.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> Mike Newell, you, hopefully you will know who Mike is. He did one of the Harry Potters, he did Four Weddings and a Funeral and he did Donnie Brasco so he covers everything. He can do the real live action and the romance and humor and then again, then with Harry Potter he can do mystical things too, and magical things.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> I\u2019ll say it, it is, the footage that we have to show you guys today is pretty magical. But we\u2019re going to show some footage first and then bring\u2026.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> Yeah, we\u2019re gonna show, I guess we\u2019re gonna show you a little footage. What you\u2019re gonna see now is a very cut down version of what we call the Siege on Alamut. Our story begins with young Jake Gyllenhaal in a marketplace where the king observes his valor and adopts him as his son. This becomes his third son. We cut to fifteen years later where the sequence is about to start and they\u2019re about to siege, take a siege on a city called Alamut. He being the younger brother is relegated to being at the back of the battle. But he decides not to be in the back of the battle, he\u2019s gonna be in the front. And decides to go in the back door rather than in the front door, where his brother, his brothers are. So this is the Siege on Alamut, the cut-down version. Enjoy it.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> Alright, here we go.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/object><\/div>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> Outstanding. And, you know, putting that scene together, it takes a director to have that has a real flare for action, a real imagination and we\u2019re gonna bring out our next guest who is the director of the film and you know him from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and, uh, \u2018forget about it,\u2019 Donnie Brasco. So let\u2019s bring out Mike Newell. Welcome.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike Newell:<\/strong> Thank you.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> So tell us a little bit about that scene, putting that together. Well first of all, what do you think? This is pretty great?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> My god. Hello y\u2019all.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> So that scene, tell us a little bit about filming it. That\u2019s pretty intense.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> The scene took forever. I was just saying to Jake behind there, if they\u2019d let us we\u2019d be shooting it now. And it was shot by three separate, or on three separate tracks. There was the kind of character action stuff. Then there was the stunt stuff, which was handled by the second unit but with Jake very important. Jake doing a tremendous number of the stunts himself. Makes it so much easier when the lead actor can actually do that stuff, as Jake could. He, ask him about them. And then, of course, there\u2019s the third thing which is the computer graphics side of it. And all of those were very, very complicated in that scene. The big shots of the city, the city didn\u2019t exist. We sent people to India to photograph Indian cities so that we got the detail absolutely right. But all of the wide shots didn\u2019t exist. That big castle with the yard that they finally attack, that existed but that was on one of the biggest stages in the world which is called the Bond Stage in Pinewood in England. It\u2019s simply colossal. And that was just that one little part of it. So it was a huge, huge undertaking.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> It\u2019s a fantastic scene. I\u2019m curious, you know, with a movie like this, one of the key things is tone. I mean there\u2019s so many different ways to go with tone. Could you just talk a little bit about what you wanted coming into it and did it change at all as the film went along?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> Well, I think that Jerry and I felt that it was gonna be a very important thing that he and I should feel the same about. We should feel good about it. And it was that this would not be a kind of post-modern tone, by which I mean you do something heroic, you turn to the camera, and you wink. Um, we didn\u2019t want that at all. We wanted it to be absolutely for real and that the audience would sense the peril, they would sense the emotions, they would sense the laugh, they would be right in the middle of the action of the whole movie and not constantly yanked out of it by the movie commenting on itself. And so it had to be absolutely real from the ground up.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> What about, Jerry, what, coming in, what was the priority for you as far as tone?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> You know, I think to capture the realism of the period and also get the humor and the romance of the period. And shooting this in Morocco, what you don\u2019t see on the screen it was close to 120 degrees every day. So it was brutal out there for Mike and all the cast. And again, it shows in their performances because they feel the heat, they feel the tension. Yet Mike is wonderful with humor and that\u2019s what we\u2019re, we\u2019re really after, and we got a lot of humor in this.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s a shame we can\u2019t show you any of our wonderful funny moments when I have to call Fred, Alfred Molina who plays, well he plays a wonderful untrustworthy desert sheik. You\u2019ll all enjoy him.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> That\u2019s fantastic. And what, what did you guys know about Prince of Persia the video game? I mean, is it something that you were pretty familiar with before\u2026?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> Oh, yes. Well, I have a fourteen year old son and the game actually slightly, it\u2019s a bit too, um, it\u2019s a bit too early for him. The first version of the game was over by the time he started to play. He now takes the Reichstag, he fights the second world war mostly. Um, but of course now there are new versions coming through which, some of the artwork for which we had a chance to look at. Which were very impressive indeed. I played the game as much as I was able. I was absolutely hopeless. He dropped into, he fell into a revolving knives every time.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> Don\u2019t we all? Jerry, what about you?<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry:<\/strong> Uh, I\u2019m not an avid gamer. I\u2019m a little busy between our little television shows and movies we make all over the world. But thanks to Jordan Mechner, you know, I became very familiar with the game and just, you know, loved it and loved the devices in it and the characters. And I think what Mike brought to it is the kind of Shakespearean drama that we have throughout the story and the wonderful humor. And then you haven\u2019t seen <\/em><\/span><\/span>Gemma <\/em><\/a>, who you gentlemen will enjoy watching, as the women I\u2019m sure enjoy watching Jake Gyllenhaal.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Geoff:<\/strong> We know this film started with a video game and that started with the creator, Jordan Mechner, and then now it\u2019s going to live on screen with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Let\u2019s bring them both out. Let\u2019s welcome Jordan and Jake. This is pretty great right here. Outstanding.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jake Gyllinhaal:<\/strong> An ocean of people.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n