From Rebecca Murray,
Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.
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Director Stephen Hopkins accompanied the stars of The Reaping - Hilary Swank and Idris Elba - as well as producer Joel Silver to the 2007 Wonder Con. The annual comic book-centric event is a tamer version of the San Diego Comic Con, but the fans are just as receptive to checking out film clips and listening to actors and directors promote their upcoming projects. Hopkins and company were greeted warmly by the audience, and their extended trailer for The Reaping was met with enthusiastic applause.

In The Reaping, Swank plays a former missionary who lost her faith and has become one of the leading experts on debunking miracles. Her belief in science over religion is put to the test when she visits a small Louisiana town suffering from what appears to be the Biblical plagues.

Why was there a delay in releasing The Reaping?
“Well, when we were talking about it at Comic Con, we were just about to do the filming that we never got to do in Louisiana because of the hurricanes. And then all of a sudden I couldn’t get Hilary [Swank], Idris [Elba], and David Morrissey in the same place. So then we were going to shoot it in June and it was going to come out in August or September, but at the end I couldn’t get it until September. We shot in September and then after that we had to finish the visual effects and all that. And you know, we didn’t want to put it out at Christmas time. It’s not really a Christmas movie!”

Releasing it on Good Friday sounds like a good idea.
“It seems like a fun idea.”

Was that your idea or the studio’s?
“The studio. Joel [Silver] does all that stuff. I don’t think it’s a summer movie, because I think summer movies generally need to be sort of feel good or giant. This is feel bad. This is quirky and it’s got a lot of religious stuff in it which is going to be controversial, I think, probably. So for me, I tried to hook on an idea of what the film meant to me - that it is sort of about fundamentalism. I feel that any form of ethical, moral, religious, political fundamentalism just leads to destruction, clearly. If everyone thinks they’re right and everyone else is wrong, it’s not going to do anyone any good.”

There are no winners.
“If you can’t be non-judgmental or whatever… I think this film’s kind of about that. It’s interesting. Hilary’s character believes absolutely that God doesn’t exist and everyone else is wrong. And then we walk into communities which are full of fundamental religious people who believe that absolute theirs is the right way and everyone else is wrong. All heaven and hell breaks loose in the film. When Hilary and Joel called me up, I thought, that’s a good reason to do it anyway. I knew with Hilary we’d be able to do something not too cheesy. Sometimes these movies can be cheesy, and actually sometimes those cheesy movies are really fun.”

It’s funny you said this movie would be controversial. I asked Hilary Swank that question and she said she doesn’t think people will find it controversial at all.
“I don’t think people are going to be holding up banners, but I think there’s a lot of people who are going to be talking about it a great deal. When we were shooting in Louisiana, I had to deal with the heads of most of the churches. Actually, we shoot on church land and they own all the land. They loved the script. They said, ‘This is great.’ They said it’s not too scary. The head of the Methodist church - the archbishop or something like that - he said if you made a film of the Bible it would be XXX rated, especially the Old Testament because it’s very dark and it’s gruesome and really bizarre. So this is a very dark movie and it’s kind of based on a dark Old Testament God and an Old Testament devil.”

Were you aiming for an R rating?
“I actually wanted a PG-13 rating. To be frank, when I first read a version of the script it was so blood and gory I thought I didn’t want to do that. So I thought PG-13, it could be much more about unconscious and subconscious - fun, scary, terror, than realistic things. But then the subject matter, I mean, it’s so dark that the MPAA would never give us a PG-13 rating if the Bible was involved, which they consider to be realistic history of a certain period of time. So it wasn’t based on fantasy like some things. The Ring was based on fantasy so that’s okay, but this is based on the Bible so it’s not okay.”

But you never know what the MPAA is going to do.
“It is really creepy dark. We showed it to an audience of 400 people the other night and people were really creeped out. It sort of atmospherically gets under your skin.”

And that’s the reaction you wanted.
“Which I think you do in a PG-13 thing better. Whereas R-rated tends to have heads flying off and people being raped, and whatever. I just thought, ‘Let’s do something cooler than that.’”

Did the first script you saw have heads flying off?
“Oh, lots of heads flying off. Crosses falling off things and penetrating people’s skulls.”

So that version would have been just been a horror film, not a psychological thriller?
“That’s what they wanted and I must admit, I think I failed at that (laughing).”

What do you want audiences to be talking about as they leave your movie?
“There’s lots of twists at the end which, obviously, I clearly can’t mention, and they’ll be talking about that. But they’ll be talking about, I think, elements of fundamentalist faith. I think they’re talking about, ‘I believe this, I don’t believe that.’ I think it’s a faith questioning thing. I think it’s interesting.”

It will make people have discussions about faith?
“I think so. I think people will have to talk about stuff. Once again, it’s a kind of complicated film. This is not a film that you don’t pay attention to.”

So it’s not a summer popcorn film in any way, shape, or form.
“Exactly! That’s exactly the way of putting it!”