Exhausted from doing a day of "Pan’s Labyrinth" press immediately following his last night shoot for "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," Doug Jones was giddy to talk about his latest costumed character. Some thought Silver Surfer would be a CGI motion capture gig, but it is not.
"Well, to this day, I’ve never done CGI dots for motion capture," said Jones. "I just finished a job where everyone thought that’s what I did and that is not exactly the case."
Luckily, Jones can go on the record about the costume, since another major news outlet already spilled the beans. "The good thing is that somebody from MTV put a story out, they were doing a set visit and they told something they probably shouldn’t have and that’s when I walked on set, they said, ‘And then Silver Surfer walked in the studio door. The hush fell over the crowd’ or whatever he said. But he reported that the Silver Surfer was dressed in dark grey muscle and shrouded in a black hooded cape to keep him from the public or something like that. So that’s out there now so I’m not telling any tales out of school by reporting what he said, am I? You didn’t hear that from me, you heard it from MTV, okay?"
However, just like The Thing, the Silver Surfer won’t just be the muscle suit. "I would be remiss if I said it’s just that. 20th Century Fox really is spending a lot of money putting together the very best visual effects done by Weta with the very best practical effects done by Spectral Motion to create a look that is really going to stun you on film. He is absolutely, I’m not kidding. He’s stunningly gorgeous."
Jones has seen footage, and he makes a bold claim. "I saw a test at the early stage and it was like drop dead oh my gosh, this is going to make the fans wet themselves. Yeah, you are."
So if it’s so cool, shouldn’t he just get his own movie? "If all goes well with this one, that could be in the works, coming down the pipe, let’s hope."
