Thomas Jane on the Look of the Films: Will They Be Like “Sin City” or More Traditional Adaptations?: “You know we’re gonna do a little bit of both. What’s exciting for us is to see that - what’s possible with green screen and shooting on high def digital like they do with ‘Collateral,’ Michael Mann’s movie. It’s fantastic.
What you’ll see is a lot of movies being made in a kind of AIP-lower-budget manner. You could shoot them and make them look incredible. And we’re gonna do a lot of that stuff. We’re gonna do a lot of that stuff. It’s not gonna be black and white like ‘Sin City,’ but we’ll be able to do a color movie and create a whole world that’s gonna not look like a comic book world; it’s going to look like an advanced reality. More real than real.
It depends on the subject matter. Like ‘In the Blood’ will be big, very grounded in reality. ‘The Lurkers’ is much more of a hard noir, so we’ll be able to get away with a more stylistically rich film, a stylistically rich look - like we’re going after with the poster. It’s obviously real, it’s obviously me, the colors are rich and they talk more, almost like Technicolor used to be. That’s what we can get away with now – a visually arresting movie.”
Thomas Jane on Whether He’ll Be Starring in the Films: “No, that’s a mistake [in the press release], a mistake. We’re producing it. It’s called Raw Entertainment. It’s Steven and my production entity. I’ll be starring in ‘The Lurkers’ and I might take a small part here or there but by no means is this a vanity label or I’m starring in everything that we do. We’re looking for fresh material. We’re looking for stuff that’s brought to us from the outside that Steven didn’t write. We’re just looking for great material. I by no means want to have to star in this stuff.”
But Having His Name Attached Will Help…: “Yeah, like for ‘The Lurkers’ it’s good but for ‘In the Blood,’ there’s no part in it for me. That’s the story about a 16-year-old werewolf and that’s where we want to keep it. Keep mixing it up, keep the doors open for a lot of other guys.”
Who’s Been Cast in “The Lurkers:” Jane said, “Just me.”
Thomas Jane on Whether Lions Gate Promoted “The Punisher” Correctly: “I don’t know, I’m not an ad guy. All I know is I think we could have had a better opening day theatrically. But the fans kind [of found us]. We proved ourselves with DVD sales. That’s what’s generating numbers.”
Niles said, “Near as I can tell, they did compared to some of Tom’s other films, like ‘Stander,’ which was probably one of his best movies that got like no [support]. I think ‘The Punisher’ sort of promotes itself, too. I think they did a good job as far as I can tell.”
Thomas Jane on the Status of “The Punisher 2:” “The script’s being done and we should start shooting by the end of the year.”
