Joel Silver
is sort of the unofficial spokesman for the
Wachowski
Brothers. They never do press, even when their own movies are coming out,
let alone during production. But producer Silver ushered the visionaries into
Hollywood and explains their process whenever he can. With
Speed Racer
wrapping principal photography and onto the visual effects stage, Silver
previewed the next new vision from the
Matrix boys.
"The Wachowski Brothers really can’t do anything easy,"
said Silver. "They want to make it as hard as they possibly can. So [Speed
Racer is] has a look that you have never seen before. It’s really a vast
panorama of the story. There’s going to be a trailer out at Christmas, and it’s
pretty spectacular. So you’ll see it pretty soon."
Shot entirely on green screen, Speed Racer borrows
less from the landmark 300
than it does from the Wachowskis’ own previous effort. "There were a lot of
green screen elements in the Matrix movies. There were a lot of things
that were done in those films that were done in a very serious CGI format. This
is even more advanced than that."
Specifically, getting the details of a general race track
involves more elements than any bullet time scene or burly brawl they’ve done
before. "Look at a movie like
Ben-Hur. They took nine months to shoot that chariot race and they had to
deal with the horses and the chariots and the crowds. Here’s a movie that’s made
not even 50 years later, these big huge car races, huge crowds. And there are no
cars, anyplace. It’s all on the computer."
Speed Racer, starring
Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, and Susan Sarandon,
hits theaters May 8, 2008
