Pan preview footage reaction: Director Joe Wright speaks

This morning in central London, we were treated to around 15 minutes of new footage from director Joe Wright’s upcoming fantasy/adventure, Pan. The film, which stars Hugh Jackman as the movie’s lead villain Blackbeard, Rooney Mara as Tiger Lilly, Garrett Hedlund as Hook and newcomer Levi Miller as Peter, arrives in cinemas in October.

When Joe Wright‘s Pan was announced, I must admit to being one of those who rolled his eyes at the thought of a new re-imagining of J.M. Barrie’s classic tale. In the very near past we’ve had the likes of Peter Pan (2003), Finding Neverland, and even last year’s TV special Peter Pan Live on our screens, and it seems too soon to take a trip back. Does the world need another movie? It is very clear from the footage that Warner Bros. showed off this morning that director Joe Wright and his team are going after a very different retelling of the tale with writer Jason Fuchs focussing his attention on the young Pan, and his journey to Neverland with a much younger Hook (Hedlund, who seems to be channelling Dustin Hoffman‘s voice in the scenes we saw) to find out what happened to his mother.

My initial opinion could be swayed.

We don’t want to comment too much on the footage we saw – it felt like we’ve seen the whole movie condensed down to the fifteen minutes – but we will say that it does looks very impressive – colourful, extremely grand, and very different to what we’ve seen before.

That said, we have a bunch of things that we learned from the 20-minute Q+A with director Joe Wright, and co-producer Paul Webster that we attended after this morning’s footage screening.

Joe Wright, Paul Webster

• Wright revealed that it was daunting taking on a film of this scale having not done a film containing as much CGI before.
• The script was so strong, and such a love-letter to Peter Pan and the original source material.
• Didn’t have to worry about re-hashing anything that has come before. It’s such an original script.
• Wright said that he looked back at the book before making the movie and glanced at the other movies that have been adapted from it – if only to see what he “didn’t want to do” with his version of Barrie’s classic.
• The book has a strange atmosphere which he tried to bring to the way he told the story.
• Wright sees the film as being created inside Peter’s imagination; a pre-pubescent boy and not through a boy with ‘teenage cool.’ He tried not to be cool when making the film. Everything in the film had to be based on something that exists on ‘our beautiful planet.’ Wright and his team researched the Crystal Caves in Mexico, and the landscaping in Vietnam (where they shot lots of plates) so that everything had a rod back into our world.
• With the costumes it very similar – it was about finding references that they could then exaggerate for Neverland.
• Producer Webster revealed that they had huge confidence in the script and Joe’s imagination on the film. Warner Brothers brought so much to the table with a team that knew how to work on such a huge scale. A lot of the crew on Pan have worked together on Wight’s movies for years.
• The Pan set was apparently the biggest set anyone who worked on the film had ever seen. Both pirate ships seen in the movie were built for real at life-size scale.
• There were five art directors and two cinematographers on the movie.
• The film is still being converted to 3D. Wright revealed that he had to think about shooting with a view to the film being converted to 3D afterwards. He said that he couldn’t do ‘over-shoulder’ shots as they don’t work as well in 3D. They did have moments where they could play around with 3D and create different shots to complement the ‘third dimension.’

Director Joe Wright

• Wright revealed that he likes 3D if it’s done well and not an after thought. Chris Parks who did the 3D conversion on Gravity is handling the conversion on Pan. Although it isn’t finished, he says it looks great so far.
• Wright also commented that he sees 3D as a format for children. The format relies on having two equally as strong eyes, which a lot of adults don’t have.
• It is the pair’s first family film. Wright says that he recently became a parent to a son who is desperately in love with his mother, and his mother with him. It is one of the reasons why he took on the film; to make a movie for him, and reference their love. Pan is essentially about a son looking for his mother.
• In regards talking to an adult audience? Wright says that it appeals to him. It’s anarchic, mischievous, very different to American kids films, very open-hearted and even has a bit of Nirvana in it (Wright is referencing one of the scenes in which we saw which sees the population of Neverland chanting the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit to the arrival of Blackbeard in a flying ship).
• Levi Miller, who makes his debut as Peter in the film, was the the result of a global search for the title character. Thousands of tapes were submitted, as was Miller’s from Australia. His tape showed Miller’s openness and wonder, and on top of that he was a great actor. It compared finding Miller to finding Saorise Ronan when he made Atonement back in 2007.
• It is Miller’s first film, but other than the limited working hours that any child actor can do, he said that there were no issues with directing him and the rest of the children in the movie. With children, there comes no ego.
• There were three weeks of rehearsals on the film where all of the actors got to know one-another so that they all felt comfortable. Miller apparently called Hugh Jackman Mr. Jackman for the first week. Miller also adored working with Garrett Hedlund and had ‘a crush’ on Rooney Mara.
• Jackman worked really hard as Blackbeard and because he had a background in theatre was totally prepared for the role. He was playful as the villain of the piece and a real company leader. Wright said that he tried to find a dark side in Jackman, but couldn’t find it. He revealed that Jackman used to walk around the set every Friday with 400 lottery scratch cards and hand them out to the crew. He also would not leave the set – he would always be there doing his own thing.
• The character of Blackbeard is really dark, but at certain points in the film the audience will sympathise with him.
• Wright said that the most challenging thing to shoot was the battle between the two flying pirate ships in the movie, which took five weeks to shoot.
• Wright said that he made the film completely independent of whether there was any intention to make any further sequels.

Pan opens on October 9^th in the US and October 16^th in the UK.

Here are some of the costumes used in the film, plus a brand new trailer which landed earlier today.