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Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon - About All Projects - Iesb.net Interview

Robert Sanchez

Wednesday 15 February 2006, by Webmaster

Exclusive Video Interview: Joss Whedon on Wonder Woman, X-Men and the future of Serenity

We are back in town after our crazy weekend in San Francisco for WonderCon. We have brought you back tons of goodies and interviews and still have another batch of articles coming soon to wrap up the con.

We hadn’t been back in Los Angeles for no more than a few hours when we had to get ready to cover the red carpet premiere of Date Movie in Westwood. But boy, what a great surprise the movie gods had in store for us. Joss Whedon showed up to support Alyson Hannigan’s newest project.

We took the opportunity and asked Joss about a few projects including a sequel to Serenity, Wonder Woman, a possible Spike spin off movie and all things Whedonesque.

IESB: Serenity rumors, there may be a sequel maybe not, what’s going on...

JW: Still waiting to see how the dvd does, I’m not staying awake at night and holding my breath, I am happy with the movie, happy with the way it’s been received, if somebody calls me and says let’s make another one I will but I have other things to do in the mean time like be here.

IESB: Yeah, you gotta support Allison, very funny movie by the way. They parodied a lot of stuff I was expecting them to parody Angel or Buffy or something.

JW: I don’t really thing that is the kind of movie that this audience thinks about, I mean obviously they are tv shows, but they’re looking at the date movies the comedies, they’re going to parody the big things.

IESB: They parody star wars.

JW: Well you know Star Wars is pretty big, it’s small now but it’s catching on. Star Wars is going to be a thing, mark my words.

IESB: There was talk of a Spike spin off movie is that going to happen?

JW: I have high hopes, I am working on it but I haven’t had any kind of word yet.

IESB: Wonder Woman, you’re working on it...

JW: Yes.

IESB: How soon do we get some announcements? Is Joel [Silver] pushing you? When do we find out who is going to be Wonder Woman?

JW: We find out who is going to be Wonder Woman when they cast it...I am finishing the script now, I am a few weeks away from a draft, they’ll take a look at that and they’ll either say this is absolutely perfect for Paul Sorvino or they’ll say this sucks and hire somebody else, it’s impossible to say but I think in a few weeks time they should get a sense of what I am doing in the movie and then we can start talking about casting.

IESB: Now do you have anything in mind, what age she is going to be, she is going to be young 20’s?

JW: Again, I do and I don’t, it’s a coming of age story but it’s a coming of age story for somebody who’s not necessarily an adolescent she’s never been off this island that she lives on so she literally could be between 15 and 30, we find the actress who is right for that...we hire her, it doesn’t matter how old she is.

IESB: So it’s going to be an origin story just like Batman Begins...

JW: Yeah it is, very different than Batman Begins but very similar in being an origin story. But the great thing about her is that she’s never been in the world, every experience is new. She’s young whether or not she’s actually young.

IESB: There are going to villains, there’s going to be all that good stuff? And it’s going to stay loyal to the comic books?

JW: Well the villains are of my own creation. I don’t think Wonder Woman has the greatest rogues gallery in the world so I created someone of my own for her to come up against. It has to do with Greek mythology and the roots that the original comic was built on.

IESB: So when do you think you are going to start shooting?

JW: I have no idea, there is no schedule for this. If they love the script it will be soon if they don’t it’ll be the other thing, it’s impossible to tell. Right now I am in the thick of the script. I feel that it’s amazing, I can’t wait to shoot it but you show it to the studio and who knows how they are going to react.

IESB: Besides Wonder Woman what else are you working on?

JW: I have a script, Goners, at Universal. It’s an original of mine that I am also anxious to polish and get shooting. I also have some comic books, I mean I have too many ideas it’s just a question of free time.

IESB: Are you going to go back to the X-Men series?

JW: I am doing another year on X-Men with John Cassiday my artist, we had so much fun in the first year that we are doing one more. And I am doing Buffy comics, sort of a continuation of the series in comic book form. Working on a comic for Serenity, I just love comics. So I can’t get enough of that either.

IESB: Killing off Alan [Tudyk] in the Serenity] film, whose idea was that?

JW: Well it was kind of organic, it came from a lot of different things, but ultimately I realized I had to kill somebody or the last half hour of the movie there would be no stakes it would be like oh well they’re all in the show, they’re all gonna live. Even if they didn’t know the show they would be like well nobody has died except for Book, I needed to just plunge a giant piece of wood into somebody’s chest to say for the rest of this movie nobody is safe and it made the rest of the movie more exciting for people because they went he might kill them all, he’s like that. So it was a tough decision for everybody but Alan Tudyk, who was Wash , who thought it was hilarious. He made jokes the whole time.

IESB: I didn’t see it coming, I gotta tell you I didn’t see it coming. Serenity movie, chance of it going on the Scifi channel or do you want a theatrical release?

JW: I want whatever’s right for the story, if it was made for tv I don’t have a problem with that, I love tv. I love tv movies when they’re well made, I love tv series. I love that universe. If it’s movies, whatever it is if somebody says you can do something on radio with these actors, you could do an awesome radio show, quite frankly because it’s cheaper, but the fact of the matter is nobody is calling right now. You know the movie just opened, the dvd just came out, that’s still happening. It hasn’t even come out in Europe yet. So we are just waiting to see where the chips fall and then we’ll see if somebody’s interested in some permutation of this world, of these actors down the line, I am never not going to be interested. I love these people and I love the people that they play. But, I am not focusing on it right now, I am waiting to see.

IESB: The marketing that was done here in the states, were you happy with it? Did the studio learn something from US and they’re hoping to change it in Europe?

JW: Well US and Europe were kind of developing their campaigns at the same time. Marketing is a very tricky beast, I definitely learned a lot of things that, things I would have done differently, but Monday morning quarterbacking is just what everybody goes through, when their dealing with marketing, and I think marketing gets an unfair rap for that. Yes there is always something you could have done different. But you know what, they saw an audience, they targeted that, they got people to come out, a lot of people to come out to a movie with no stars in it and so whatever they didn’t do I think has been overshadows by what they did do. Maybe I would have done different but I think they did a good job.