Collider: A lot of people associate Joe as an American kind of thing, like an American mythology.  How are you going to make it so it’s or are you going to make it so it’s a world-wide kind of thing?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: One of the aspects that I find when you read the comic book—forget the pre-83 Joe because its clearly what that is—but when you read the comic book, it’s a group of good guys going after a group of bad guys. We have a really interesting international cast and I personally view the world in a very polyglot sort of way, go Barack Obama, and so we wanted the movie to really reflect a modern worldview.

Collider: Actually, not about Joe or Transformers, but you’ve now brought 2 popular properties from the 80’s—Transformers and Joe—you’re bringing them to the big screen.  Is there another 80’s property like a Thundercats?

Lorenzo: I wish.

Collider: A big question with fans that have seen the costumes is, are the people in the movie wearing the same outfits the entire time?

Lorenzo: I would say each character has more than one outfit, by in large, other than of course Snake Eyes, but everybody else has multiple looks. So, yeah, they’re always in costume but there are multiple looks.

Collider: Fandom seems to think that everyone’s wearing black all the time.  So what do you want to tell fandom that they can look forward to?  What are they going to be impressed with the costumes and with the look of the film?

Lorenzo: Well, I think our costume designer’s phenomenal and she’s just done a great job in delivering a very varied look.  You know, Snake Eyes is a character in black so he would be in black and you know we looked through all the comic books and The Baroness and unless we’re missing something she’s always in black.  Every character in the movie is not in black all the way through including - other than Snake Eyes - who has to be in black all the way through.  So, you know, there’s multiple looks that for each of those characters that you’ll see them in different color schemes and in different attitudes I’d say.

Collider: So the next thing, with the movie version of Joe,  how would you describe the movie of Joe as compared to say the comic book, the cartoon, what are fans of the original stuff—even back in the 60’s—what do you think the movie is closest to in terms of tone or the feel of the film?

Lorenzo: That’s an interesting question. I guess it’s definitely a comic book movie and it’s definitely has a great sense of humor, so there’s a lot of humor and a lot of drama and a lot of action.  It’s a hard one to pin down.  All movies tones are hard until you see them.  I would say there’s an equal measure of all 3 of those things in the movie.

Collider: So how has filming been going so far? Where are you in the schedule and when do you leave for Prague?

We’re at day 50, I think, today and we’re doing great.  Stephen is on schedule and delivering some great footage.  We leave for Prague May 8^th—or…yeah, May 8^th.

Collider: And what is exactly being filmed in Prague?

Ah, there’s a series of things being filmed in Prague, but part of the movie takes place in Paris and part of the movie takes place in…well, there’s multiple locations around the world and Prague is serving for 2 or 3 of them. 

Collider: And are you bringing the whole cast over there? Is it selected?

I think it’s almost 100% but not quite 100% because I think a couple of them are done, like General Hawk is done and I think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is done, but I think other than those 2 everybody’s there.

Collider: So you’ve been filming in Downey.  Was there a specific reason for shooting there and I heard they have a rather large soundstage there?

Yeah, they have a gigantic soundstage.  Paramount was so aggressive to get the movie going that we needed stage space right away and we needed large stage space and Downey fit the bill on both counts, so we were able to locate most of the production in one location.

Collider: And I know “G.I. Joe” is famous for having The Pit.  How was it working in that…did you guys build The Pit in like a full-size kind of thing?  I’m just curious what you did.

Lorenzo: We built a couple of the levels of The Pit as Stephen has imagined it and Ed Verreaux, our designer, is really gigantic so you couldn’t really build all of it, but so some of it. But we built a full floor of it which is gigantic. I think everybody’s going to be really happy that we took The Pit very seriously and built it to fulfill anybody’s sense of fantasy of what it could be.

Collider: So for fans of Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes which go back a long, long time, what can they look forward to about their involvement in the film and have you already filmed a battle with them and how did it turn out?

Lorenzo: We’re really exploring the mythology and we hope that the mythology, if we’re lucky enough to get to a 2^nd film, we want to continue to explore the mythology of the two characters. It’s very rich and this movie explores a lot about how they met at first and how they fell apart.  And yes we have shot a fight between the 2 of them and we hope that everybody’s going to agree with us that it’s going to be one of those great battles.

Collider: And so I think a lot of fans out there are curious, how is the movie going to enter the world of Joe?  How are we going to become familiar with their universe?

Lorenzo: You know we treated—like a lot of movies—that it exists and therefore we don’t try to explain its existence, we treat it as though it is a part of our world. 

Collider: Which cast member did the most work researching their role?

Lorenzo: You know, I’m not sure.  The good news is that everybody got really excited about the origin story of their character and everybody did a lot of research so I don’t know that anybody did more than other to tell you the truth. 

Collider: Does it get any easier making a big budget movie now that you’ve done a few of them?

Lorenzo: No. 

Collider: Do you ever get sinus infections from doing them?

Lorenzo: (laughter) Yeah, sadly yes. 

Collider: You’ve been on-set almost every day. What’s that like?  Is it an enjoyable challenge, you know, what’s the experience like?

Lorenzo: It’s totally enjoyable.  It is a challenge every single day and if you like challenges then it gives you…it’s sort of an adrenalin rush to try to deal with all the things that come at you.  The particular challenge that this movie presented itself was how quickly we got it off the ground and that brings with it exciting decision making which is you’ve got to make your decision and keep moving…each decision is very important so we spent a lot of time and effort on each one but once made we have to keep moving, so that’s an advantage and in terms of you have to be decisive and it’s an added amount of pressure because you’re having to do it in a limited time frame.

Collider: As the producer, was there ever any thought of doing “G.I. Joe” in 3-D or is it still too soon for a big, big property like this?

Lorenzo: To be honest with you, we’re so crazy trying to focus on getting this movie made.  Haven’t thought a bit about it.