BRIEFLY WITH THE 300 PRODUCERS

BRIEFLY WITH THE 300 PRODUCERS

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Neswrama

08-02-2006

Mark Canton, Gianni Nunnari and Debbie Snyder were not on the panel at the 300 presentation at San Diego Comic-Con but as producers of the movie they are still very much part of the projects. The director may be seen by many as the real brain and heart behind a movie but without these three producers, this movie never would have been made.

Newsarama: Mark you optioned 300, what was your vision for it?

Mark Canton: I knew Frank going back to my Batman days. The object was always to be really faithful to the vision. The challenge was; is there an ingenious enough filmmaker with the vision who can do that plus make it their own. Then from having been on the other side so long is, can you get your partners who are going to finance the movie to let you make that vision without feathering the fish. This movie has been an uncompromising vision.

NRAMA: Debbie, how does 300 separate itself from other films from this genre?

Debbie Snyder: There’s a whole fantasy element that separates it further from some of the traditional films of this genre. That is because of the storyteller element. [director] Zack [Snyder] felt like he had some creative license. The storyteller is trying to rile the troops up before they go to battle so he talks about the mortals, which were the elite fighting force and telling them that they were monsters and demons. Then they are envisioned as monsters which Zack really embraced. It was important to enhance that fantasy.

NRAMA: When Frank does his comics he has no responsibility to anyone, who does the production feel responsible to?

MC: We’re responsible to each other.

Gianni Nunnari: We’re three partners.

MC: We’re responsible to the people we’re in business with which is Warner Bros. and our partners. When you’re a producer and you and your teammates go down a certain road, the biggest challenge every day is to stay on the road and if you think that there’s a bump, it is all about solving problems to get back on track. At the same time, as much as Frank does this for himself, for many years he has thought about having his work translated, so it’s just a different interpretation. I imagine that’s why he’s at the top of his profession, that someone might take this vision and make a film.

DS: Zack’s vision was always to make the graphic novel so we’re responsible to the integrity of that graphic novel, which is not something we take lightly. It took us a long time to get the greenlight. They didn’t know what we were making - like were we making a Troy “light”? One of the things that was very important to all of us was to maintain the R rating and not sanitize it. We held up our end and they’ve held up their end and have been very supportive and respectful of Zack and what he wanted to do.

GN: Also at that time we were competing because at Fox, they were going to remake the movie The 300 Spartans. There was another one at Universal which was an adaptation of Steven Pressfield’s book Gates of Fire. So we were not only trying to achieve the goal of making something different, which at that time to pass the vision to the studio, but it was also very hard because people, they were saying, “listen do you know there are two other two projects?”

300 will be released early next year. Click here for our chat with Gerard Butler. http://300themovie.warnerbros.com/


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