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Comic-Con Exclusive: Len Wiseman on Total Recall

Source: Edward Douglas

July 15, 2012

It's been a long road for director Len Wiseman's remake of Total Recall, so much so that he was able to bring the movie to Comic-Con twice, last year after just two weeks of shooting and this year with the movie having been finished just three days ago.

At this year's Sony panel, they showed an extended sizzle reel that included a lot of stuff from the trailer but also extended fight sequences and it mainly focused on the action and cutting things together at a fairly rapid pace.

Based on the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," the movie stars Colin Farrell as Doug Quaid, a factory worker who lives in the lower part of earth in a place called the Colony, who doesn't feel he has the life he should, so he visits a place called Rekall where people can go on vacations and adventures without leaving their chair, only to learn that someone has already implanted false memories in his brain. Doug suddenly finds himself on the run from the police, controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen, played by Bryan Cranston, so he teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) in order to try and stop Cohaagen. Doug's problem is that he still doesn't know who he is and many people think he is a mercenary named Hauser.

Before the Sony panel, ComingSoon.net/SuperHeroHype talked with Wiseman about:

* Returning to Comic-Con
* The scale involved with creating a world
* Working with Patrick Tatopoulos to create the visuals
* Talking about "The Fall" - a new transport system through the earth's core they created for the movie
* Bringing hovercars and other things into the movie from the Philip K. Dick story
* Bringing things from the Verhoeven film into his movie
* Balancing the exposition necessary to explain this world with action
* How happy he is that Bourne moved
(At this point, we have a guest cameo by Jessica Biel who comes over and hugs Len… lucky guy, huh?)
* Talking about the film's rating and if it was tough getting a PG-13
* Whether there's something set-up for future movies or if it's meant as a one-off
* Talks about two projects he wants to do next and how he wants to get back to doing original work after doing a sequel and a remake
* How tough it is getting original projects off the ground on a certain budget

And more!

Total Recall opens nationwide on Friday, August 3.

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