Like many of you…I’ve been curious as to why we haven’t seen any footage from “Game” as it was filmed awhile ago. Gary says the reason is due to the writer’s strike and director’s Neveldine & Taylor jumping right into “Crank: High Voltage.” Thankfully, he says footage is coming soon.

And speaking of the new “Crank” movie…Gary just saw a screening of the film and says:

“I saw the movie the other day. It’s fantastic, okay.  It’s wild, you know.  It opens up with….it opens up and Crank he falls out of the sky and you think he’s dead and his heart beats, so it opens up with these guys shoveling him up and putting him in a van and they take him to this operating room where they remove his heart because they say that Chellio’s heart is such a strong heart. So he’s going to be transplanted into this other body and he comes out and one of the Asian guys comes in, he sees him in the operation taking out the heart and he’s smoking a cigarette and he blows the smoke in Statham’s face. He’s kind of half-awake and then he takes the ashes and sort of puts it in the open cavity and all the doctors going ahhh.  That’s how it opens, but it’s just outrageous, aggressive fun.”

For more on both movies…here’s Gary.

I wanted to know what’s going on with “Game”?

Gary Lucchesi: “Game” is coming out next summer.

Does it have a release date yet?

Gary Lucchesi: It will.  It will very soon, but it’ll be…What happened…I’ll tell you exactly what happened is that Neveldine & Taylor, who directed “Game”, they also directed “Crank 2” and because of the potential SAG strike at the end of June, okay, there was an opportunity….we make movies like “Crank 2” so we can make movies like “Henry Poole”.  Does that make sense?

100%.

Gary Lucchesi: One allows us to take the risks for the other because you know “Crank 1” was successful.  The DVD was big.  There’s a chance to make “Crank 2”.  Jason Statham’s got this window, so we went to Neveldine & Taylor and say, okay we’ve got a lot of visual effects in “Game”—it’s a huge visual effects movie—it’s going to take us 6 months to do those anyway, why don’t you throw “Crank 2” in there and let’s get it done and “Crank 2” is fantastic.  And it is what it is.

It’s coming out in November.

Gary Lucchesi: No, “Crank 2” is coming out next April.

I was going to ask you though, when do you think we’re going to finally…a lot of fans want to see some footage from “Game”, so when do you think…?

Gary Lucchesi: Oh I think soon.

Christmas?

Gary Lucchesi: Oh yeah, they’ll have something at Christmas I would think.

What are these great big visual effects that take so long?

Gary Lucchesi: “Game” is a sim-world movie, you know so you have a young kid who is controlling an avator and there’s lots of visual effects.

Neveldine & Taylor have talked about--and some of the people I’ve interviewed in the movie—have talked about the craziness of the camera angles, just what they’ve done with the film and what have you found for them as filmmakers?  I mean they seem like some pretty crazy guys.  What’s it like to work with them?

Gary Lucchesi: They’re fantastic.  You know they came out of commercials and out of doing 2^nd unit and Mark Neveldine was a hockey player which made him really good on roller blades.  So he’d pick up these cameras and he’d go down the street with the roller blades and somebody would be pulling him on a motorcycle and he’d be getting these wild and crazy shots, so it’s….they’re visually aggressive.  Okay, that’s what they are.

I wanted to know, they shot “Crank 2” on HD cameras.

Gary Lucchesi: Yes.

How did they present that to you and say we’re going to shoot our movie…

Gary Lucchesi: We did tests.  We did tests.

Oh, so it was…

Gary Lucchesi: Oh yeah.  We shot on 2 types of HD cameras.  We shot on this Canon H1A that….I saw the movie the other day. It’s fantastic, okay.  It’s wild, you know.  It opens up with….it opens up and Crank he falls out of the sky and you think he’s dead and his heart beats, so it opens up with these guys shoveling him up and putting him in a van and they take him to this operating room where they remove his heart because they say that Chellio’s heart is such a strong heart. So he’s going to be transplanted into this other body and he comes out and one of the Asian guys comes in, he sees him in the operation taking out the heart and he’s smoking a cigarette and he blows the smoke in Statham’s face. He’s kind of half-awake and then he takes the ashes and sort of puts it in the open cavity and all the doctors going ahhh.  That’s how it opens, but it’s just outrageous, aggressive fun

I heard it’s 3 months later when he finally gets up or 2 months later.

Gary Lucchesi: Yeah, 2 months later, yeah.