::'Rundown' looks like Uni's next big hit
By Martin A. Grove::
Hollywood Reporter
September 17, 2003




'Rundown' report: After a wildly successful summer with a record-setting five films that each grossed over $100 million, Universal Pictures is coming up to bat again with what promises to be one of the fall's biggest boxoffice hits.

An early look at "The Rundown" from Universal and Columbia Pictures (which is distributing it internationally) in association with WWE Films left me with no doubt about how very commercial this picture is. That's now been further confirmed by Universal's decision to hold some 700 sneak previews of "Rundown" Saturday. Studios don't sneak films unless they really believe in them. "Rundown's" blend of comedy, action and adventure seems a safe bet to generate very favorable word of mouth to drive it when it opens Sept. 26 in about 3,000 theaters.

Directed by Peter Berg and starring The Rock, Seann William Scott, Christopher Walken, Rosario Dawson and Ewen Bremner, "Rundown" was produced by Kevin Misher, Marc Abraham and Karen Glasser. It was written by R.J. Stewart and James Vanderbilt and executive produced by Vince McMahon and Ric Kidney.

In "Rundown," The Rock -- his name's really Dwayne Johnson, but The Rock suits him much better -- emerges as a true movie star. After making his screen debut playing the Scorpion King in Universal's blockbuster sequel "The Mummy Returns" in 2001 he starred a year later in the spin-off adventure "The Scorpion King." The film scored the biggest April opening ever ($36.1 million) and went on to gross over $400 million worldwide. Now with "Rundown," Rock clearly has the look and the screen presence that big movie stars always have. The camera loves him and whenever he's on screen, which is for just about the entire movie, it's as if a spotlight's shining on him.

I was happy to have the opportunity to focus on how "Rundown" reached the screen with Misher and Abraham, both of whom have had a wealth of previous experience making and supervising numerous hit movies. Misher, who was one of the producers of "Scorpion King," joined Universal in 1996 as executive vice production of production and was named president of production three years later. At Universal he supervised production on such hits as "The Mummy," "The Mummy Returns," "Hannibal" and "Erin Brockovich." His production company Misher Films is based at Universal. Abraham's development and production company Strike Entertainment, which he founded in early 2002, is also based at Universal. "Rundown" is Strike's first film under its first-look four year production deal with Universal. Previously, Abraham was president of Beacon Communications, which he co-founded. Among the films on which he's been a producer are "The Emperors Club," "Spy Game," "The Family Man" and "Bring It On." "After 'Scorpion King' we'd been looking for a new movie for Rock and spent quite a bit of time hearing pitches and looking at material," Misher told me. "Karen (previously president of feature films for Mel Gibson's Icon Productions where she supervised production of 'What Women Want' and other titles) had a piece of material that she had in turnaround -- I think it was a 10 year old script -- and there was a really, really compelling idea in it (about) a bounty hunter character who headed down to the Amazon to pursue a quarry. It was a good idea for a fish-out-of-water action comedy and a great character for Rock, we thought. You had to create a real story around it and the story really needed a bit of reworking, but it was a very, very good idea and a good arena and a good world. We felt like the audience hadn't been taken to the jungle in quite a long time. She brought it to myself and Darren Statt, who represents The Rock. He's Rock's manager. We all read it -- The Rock, myself and Darren -- (and) liked the idea of it quite a bit. We started immediately coming up with ideas with which we could develop it and brought it to the studio, who picked up on it instantly."

This was about two years ago. "We brought on a writer, Jamie Vanderbilt, who started to work on it," Misher said. "At the same time -- that was around the release of 'Scorpion King' -- we started to discuss who could direct the movie. Scott Stuber, president of production (at Universal with Mary Parent), and I sat down with (studio chairman) Stacey Snider going down the list of directors and trying to look at the style of the movie that we wanted to create. We wanted a movie that was tough, that was funny and that was smart and we needed somebody who could tonally manage all of those things. We had had quite a bit of experience and a long relationship with Pete Berg. Everybody -- both the studio and myself -- had developed things with Pete and had been trying to work with Pete for quite some time. We met with him and started to engage in the process of talking about how we would develop this movie and how he would shoot the movie. He seemed like the perfect candidate. We brought Pete in. We met with him. The studio met with him. He went and met with The Rock. And that was about the time that the conversations with Seann started. Seann had read the script and quite liked it. Obviously, the studio has had a long history with Seann with the 'American Pie' series. So Pete met with The Rock and with Seann William Scott and that really began the process of it all coming together very quickly."

Berg, who made his feature directorial debut with "Very Bad Things," starring Cameron Diaz, Jon Favreau and Christian Slater, was best known as an actor. Among his acting credits are "Cop Land," opposite Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro and "The Great White Hype," opposite Samuel L. Jackson.

"A lot of good actors have made good directors when they're smart and Pete's one of those guys," Abraham pointed out. "You have (a director who's also) an actor who can take a little bit raw (acting talent) and give them confidence because he can speak to them in (their) language. I made a movie with Pete 12 years ago that he was an actor in -- 'A Midnight Clear' (directed by Keith Gordon). So I knew Pete for a long time just coincidentally. Those guys (Rock and Scott) immediately had a rapport and he had a way to talk to them which gave them confidence. Then you put in two really more seasoned actors like Chris Walken and Rosario Dawson, and you've surrounded your main players with some real acting chops."

Walken plays the film's real villain, who's plundering the Amazon countryside for the gold buried in its mines. Dawson plays a rebel girl who's definitely able to hold her own in the jungle. "The idea of (casting) Chris Walken came from Pete," Misher said. "It was instantly embraced as an opportunity because it's like playing with a great tennis player. Your game immediately gets better. Chris Walken as a villain brings a dimension in his credentials, his performance and the way in which you can depict this villain that just elevates it beyond a stock adversary. It really creates somebody you can have a bit of fun with in addition to him being a very formidable foe."

"It was just a good time in the universe for us in terms of Chris Walken's place as an actor," Abraham added. "He's just been re-embraced (after recent performances in Steven Spielberg's 'Catch Me If You Can' and Spike Jonze's "Weapon of Choice" music video for Fat Boy Slim) by a whole new generation of people who didn't know him like we all knew him from 'The Deer Hunter.' He's certainly taken on more of a cult status than he had ever had before."

Although "Rundown" is set in the Amazon, much of its shooting actually was done in Hawaii. "We shot for about six weeks in Oahu and then we did the rest here," Misher explained. "We went down to the Amazon on both a scout and research trip and we ran into some banditos that held up a bunch of us while we were in the middle of it. So that pretty much (ended the idea of shooting in Brazil)." "I'd like to claim that I was there," Abraham added, "to be able just to make me look like a tough guy, but I wasn't there. In retrospect, it seems like it would have been great to be there just because now Misher's got this whole lore about him. But, I think, all in all I was lucky not to have made it."

"The way I would say it," Misher said, "is that it's a good story as long as you're here to tell it. Actually, Pete was very smart about it and he wound up using some of what actually happened to us for inspiration for some of the scenes in the story. The scene that we call the Kon-Tiki fight -- where they get captured by banditos and then have that fight afterwards with the little people who come out of the trees -- the inspiration for that came out of some of the (real-life) back and forth between us and the bandits." Beyond the fact that it was safer to work in Hawaii, there also were some other factors in favor of working there. "It's not cheap, but it has a lot of benefits being part of the United States," Abraham noted. "When you take in hardware, weaponry and things like that, it's a lot easier to get them in and (to get) production support, as well. It turned out to be a really good idea (to shoot there) and we were happy about the way the movie ended up looking." With so much action packed into "Rundown," you know the filmmakers must have faced more than a few challenges during production. "It was a good group of people," Abraham observed. "It was a very experienced crew. We had a wonderful young cinematographer, Tobias Schliessler ('Free Willy 3: The Rescue'). Tom Duffield ('Ed Wood') did a great job doing the production design. That town that a good portion of the last act takes place in was completely built out at Hanson Dam in Valencia (California). When you were there, you wouldn't have known you weren't in Brazil. In terms of production, Rock is a really professional guy. Kevin's had experience with him. They had a great relationship. I found that I was embraced. Kevin teamed me up great with Rock and Rock couldn't have been a better guy. He just (would ask), 'What do you need? And when do you need it?' And, quite frankly, Seann did (things) exactly the same way. So the two guys whose backs had to carry a lot of the (load) were wide backs that were really ready and prepared to do it. Pete's an animal. He's not going to stop until he gets what he needs."

"I think what Marc's saying is that the work ethic that existed on this film really just started at the top and there was a big trickle down effect that, I think, permeates the movie," Misher added. "You really feel that we got everything on the screen that we really needed and really wanted. Rock as an action star works so hard to be in as much of the scenes as possible (and) not having a stunt double do as much as possible. Rock is really trying to make sure the audience sees his face performing as many of the stunts as possible."

"One of the things Kevin and I love about his performance," Abraham noted, "is he's this great big handsome tough guy and he's so willing to play the humor and allow himself to just sort of be the put-upon guy. The movie's always (showing him thinking), 'Oh, not another guy who wants to beat me up.' He really shows his humor chops so well there."

Asked about the toughest challenges during production, Abraham replied, "Well, some of the Kon-Tiki, the big action (fight scenes), because of time pressure we couldn't get them all in Hawaii so we had to figure out where we were going to shoot some of that stuff. We ended up shooting the Kon-Tiki sequence (so that) a good portion of almost all the stunts and a lot of the fighting took place in the L.A. Arboretum, across from (the race track) Santa Anita. At the same time, at Santa Anita they were actually shooting 'Seabiscuit.' We'd see them during the day and they would finish up on 'Seabiscuit' and we would be in the Arboretum at night. There's a little lake in there that became the beginning of what later became the river that we did use in Hawaii." "If you spoke to Seann and Rock, what they would tell you is that the toughest scene to shoot was the monkey scene," Misher said, referring to a sequence in which both The Rock and Scott are hanging upside down from trees after they've walked into traps. While they're suspended upside down, a group of wild jungle monkeys turns up and is clearly thinking about turning them into that day's dinner. "Those guys (were amazing) hanging upside down for as long as they had to. They would hang upside down as long as they could to stay in character and in the scene. You'd have to rush to let them down at the end of the scene because the blood had been rushing to their heads and they had the monkey humping them and swinging back and forth (to jump at them). I really felt for them during those moments. They played it brilliantly and they never stopped working as hard as they could for the laughs. And every time you would go over to them and say, 'Are you guys okay?' they were like, 'Let's go. Gotta get it done.'"

Considering all that they got on the screen, "Rundown's" production cost of around $85 million was very well spent. "The movie was originally budgeted at $65-68 million," Abraham said. "We were really responsible, but there was so much action in the movie. It wasn't like we were trying to guess, 'Well, maybe we should do this or not,' it was that Pete was really talented and had a lot of good ideas about what it took. That mine you see in there -- which was CGI at the end, but a portion of it we did build -- well originally we were going to build the entire mine. There was a tremendous amount of work done on the script. The original script had a slightly different tone. This actually got more and more realistic. It ended originally in that mine. Had we built that mine, we might not yet be finished making the movie." "But then the mine became just an element that would loom over the story as opposed to (being) an element of the story," Misher said.

How did Columbia become involved with a project that originated at Universal? "As far as we know -- because (with) some of the decisions we weren't completely privy to what took place in the back room like Kevin used to be," Abraham explained. "Kevin had been really the driving force behind this picture. I got into it a little later (after) the movie was expanding in terms of what kind of film it was going to be. One of the things I had traditionally been involved in is bringing some financing to the table, as well as a creative standpoint, but also bringing in some international money and territories (like) when I was at Beacon. Strike does the same thing. So with the scale and scope of the movie, (it was) always envisioned that there would be some international partnership. That was always in the Universal plan. In fact when Strike got involved and I got involved -- and was lucky enough to get involved (because), to be honest, I drew a really good card when that opportunity came up to work with these guys -- it was like, 'Well, Marc, you also bring in some territories here.' And we did. We have a relationship with a few territories around the world.

"That was during some of the moments at Universal when there was some (corporate) restructuring going on under the whole new regime with (Vivendi Universal chief Jean Rene) Fourtou restructuring and bringing in (Barry) Diller (to temporarily head Vivendi Universal Entertainment). As you know, Diller has always been someone who's always wanted to take limits of risk in terms of the film business. I think at that point there was some uncertainty and they had always had in their overall plan the idea, 'Let's bring in some international partners' and they said I would. And so they decided, 'Let's further expand this.' And at that point, I think, Columbia was pretty flush and very interested in possibly getting involved in the movie. The movie had a pretty good buzz going because -- I don't know why -- people had heard (about it) and I think they liked it. Kevin had made movies. He was one of the guys running TriStar (earlier in his career) and then Universal. And I'd made movies at Columbia. So I think they liked the group of people making the picture and they were inclined to say, 'We might be interested in international.' With Fourtou's agenda and possibly Barry's influence, it was, 'You know what? We're willing to sell off some more territories.' Or, 'Help us out with this.' And that's basically when they came to Kevin (with the proposal) and said, 'We're seriously considering doing this. Are you guys cool?' We said, 'Yeah.'"

Clearly, Columbia made the right decision when it got a look at some "Rundown" footage. "Adam Fogelson (Universal's marketing president) cut together a 15-minute reel for them to look at some footage and I think they were very, very impressed when they saw it," Misher noted. "This was in mid-stream."

"Also, I've had a long relationship with (Sony Pictures Entertainment vice chairman) Jeff Blake and Geoff Ammer (worldwide marketing president for the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group) and Kevin has, too," Abraham said. "And, really, it wasn't like we had to serve two masters. They were fantastic. They never interfered in anything. They basically said, 'We're in here for the international. We trust the movie's going to be what the movie is. We wouldn't be in it if we didn't believe in it.' And now that the movie's turned out well they've been supportive and really good guys and (we're just asking) how we can help them go out and sell the movie internationally. If you were going to get in a situation mid-stream where all of a sudden somebody was going to come in that was another studio, these were the guys you would have wanted."

"One of the interesting things about this movie, I think, is that the entire process has been marked by great collegiality," Misher observed. "The character of an organization takes the lead from the people who are at the top. The work ethic that the actors put in, that the director puts in, that the production crew puts in has somehow permeated everything in this movie and everybody approaches it without ego and with a real love for the movie. Hopefully that comes across in the movie and, hopefully, it's also coming across in the campaign to the world."

Abraham and Misher both applaud Universal's marketing of "Rundown." "We love those guys," Abraham told me. "The truth is that the whole organization from Stacey to Stuber to all the people that worked on it and in the marketing (like vice chairman Marc) Shmuger and Fogelson -- who's better? I mean, they're the best. The fact that Stacey and Stuber stood up with Misher and said, 'We're going to make this movie. We're going to spend this money. We're going to do it as good as we possibly can. We're going to take a chance on Pete Berg, who's made one movie that cost $4 million,' that's the mindset. And when you get to Fogelson and his marketing department, there's just nobody better. The difficult thing has been that we've been seeing a movie that we knew was really good, but you look on paper and it's hard to know that's going to be that good. That doesn't mean you wouldn't want to see it, but it certainly doesn't just jump out at you and say it's going to be the experience that you had in the theater (with my early look at the film). The fact that you said you really loved this movie means a lot. You don't say that all the time. It delivers.

"We've been trying to (determine) how we manage expectations and at the same time we want to go out and crow, 'Hey, we've got a really good movie!' That's been one of Adam's challenges. We had really good trailer play. It was up on some of the best titles of the summer (like) 'Bad Boys II' and 'Lara Croft' and 'S.W.A.T.' It had about a half-billion dollars of boxoffice that it played on. They did a really good job on the trailer and we all worked very hard trying to get our hands around what was the best way to sell the picture. Usually (with) a movie like this which is primarily thought of as action -- although we like to say it has a lot of comedy and really is a buddy comedy action picture -- the truth is that often times with those trailers you get a little bit of story, but mostly you just get fast cutting and show all this action. We found that because our action was kind of throwback action -- it's punching and fighting in the old ways -- we had better luck by actually playing out the scenes longer and not quick-cutting the trailer in the style we've all become accustomed to. Like when they fall down the hill (an extended sequence that would in real life have definitely broken every bone in both actors' bodies), that scene is really long in the trailer. I bet we played four times as much as you normally would have (shown) because we found that by showing it longer, it just got funnier."

"In some ways, the best advertising for the movie is the movie, itself," Misher said. "It's the experience of going through the journey with these guys. And that's what we were trying to impart in the trailer, even though you had to distill it down to a shorter message, obviously."