SDCC 2011: Legendary Pictures - Pacific Rim, The Seventh Son & Paradise Lost

The Legendary Pictures Comic-Con 2011 panel was chock-full of actors and films for the production company. Check the breakdown of the upcoming films Legendary shared at the panel:

Pacific Rim

"It's giant fucking monsters fighting giant fucking robots." That's a direct quote from Guillermo del Toro about the movie Pacific Rim. The story of aliens attacking and threatening Earth's existence is quite common in SciFi. But in Pacific Rim, humans pilot giant robots to fight back against these aliens. Guillermo del Toro emphasized that he wanted to focus on present day for the film and focus on how the world would react to such an attack and how it would change. One surprise move in casting was the inclusion of Charlie Day of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame.

When asked about Charlie Day, del Toro cited that he knew he was right for the role after seeing the episode of Always Sunny called "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats." Watch the episode here to see what he means.

Charlie Day going from that to fighting monsters? Sounds right to me, too.


The Seventh Son

The fantasy film The Seventh Son is based on The Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney. Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski, True Grit) is set as to star of the film as Master Gregory. Bridges noted that the story is quite unusual, with lots of twists and turns that he did not want to spoil. In spirit of his comments, I will only place a link to the wiki of The Wardstone Chronicles for those that want to read more about it.
Bridges also cites Director Sergey Bodrov (Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Kahn, Prisoner of the Mountains) as one of the reasons he wanted to work on the film.

Actor Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia, Stardust) joins the cast as Tom, Master Gregory's apprentice. Ben shared that in comparison to other fantasy stories, The Seventh Son has much darker characters. The Seventh Son will include the American debut of actress Alicia Vikander.  Alice also cited that she too was attracted to the darker, character based elements of the film.

It's worth noting that throughout the panel, Bridges was emitting the persona of The Dude.  Funny enough, the Director Sergey Bodrov mentioned that getting Bridges to work on such a film was not easy but joked that it would help to smoke with Bridges to talk him in to it. Apparently they have not smoked together yet, but Bodrov says they "will some day."

Paradise Lost



Concept Art from Paradise Lost

Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, Limitless) stars as Lucifer in a film adaption of the poem Paradise Lost which tells the story of the war in heaven between Michael Lucifer. The film is being directed by Alex Proyas(Dark City, The Crow) who hopes to bring visual representation of heaven and hell in ways it hasn't been seen before. Cooper studied the poem Paradise Lost while in college and begged Proyas for the role of Lucifer.  He went on to describe that he relates a lot to Lucifer, such as being part of a nuclear family and a son feeling betrayed.

Both Cooper and Proyas say the film will be as faithful to the poem as possible, and scholars who are considered experts on the poem will be keeping the film "in check."

Note: The Mass Effect portion of the Legendary Panel is being written separately and will be posted soon.

This post was written by:
Crystal