Danny Boyle

Started by oakmanc234, April 14, 2003, 09:28:10 PM

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modage

In the Future With Danny Boyle
Source: Edward Douglas March 4, 2005

Manchester born director Danny Boyle first got attention in this country over ten years ago with his thriller Shallow Grave starring Ewan McGregor. He solidified his status as a film-lover's filmmaker with the Scottish drug movie called Trainspotting, also starring McGregor, that has gone onto become a film classic to many. After a few more projects that weren't received nearly as well--including one that starred Leonardo DiCaprio fresh off the blockbuster Titanic-Boyle returned to form in 2003 when his post-apocalyptic "zombie" thriller 28 Days Later put him back on the map.

Now, Boyle returns with his next film, Millions, a movie about two boys that find a bag full of cash and need to get rid of it before it's worthless once British currency is permanently replaced by the Euro. It's a very different film for the director, but one that could possibly find him an even wider and more diverse audience, if only because it's his first film he's made that has received a PG rating. ComingSoon.net talked to Boyle while he was in New York preparing to kick-off the New York International Children's Film Festival with the film, but he sat down to talk to us about his other projects.

On returning to England, he will be getting back into preproduction work for his next film Sunshine, which will explore the realms of science fiction. "We hope to start in July," he told us. "It's kind of a space mission movie, in which they're taking a bomb the size of Kansas to reignite a section of the sun that's failing. It's got those rules of sci-fi, and it has a mystery attached to it as well. There's a mission that's failed seven years earlier and nobody knows what's happened to the crew, and at the end, they get to meet the source of all life in the universe. That has got to be worth 10 or 12 bucks or whatever you guys pay." They haven't done any casting for the film yet.

Rumors have been flying around for years that Boyle planned on making a sequel to Trainspotting called Porno, which he confirmed, sharing his thoughts on the idea. "It's not like an easy cash-in sequel. It's like what they're like in twenty years time when they're middle-aged, but it's a long-term project way down the line. The challenge for those actors--and who knows how their careers will map out--will be to come back to characters that they've played and then to play them with twenty years of your own experience laid on top of them. It should be interesting. The idea of it is not to attract a new audience to 'Trainspotting'; it's to play it to everybody who watched it when it first came out, because they also would have that twenty years of ups and downs and what have you."

Boyle was a bit enigmatic about the status of his relationship with his Trainspotting star Ewan McGregor after the actor spoke out about being replaced by Leonardo DiCaprio for Boyle's fourth film The Beach, but he said that it was pleasant and thought that it would be okay.

Boyle will not be directing the planned follow-up to his hit film 28 Days Later, dubbed 28 Weeks Later, but he will be on board as an "executive producer." "It's a very strong, simple idea again," he explained, "that England has basically been abandoned, and there's been no life there for six months. The Americans arrive to start it back up again, to reboot it...especially the franchises that are going to waste." He didn't think that Cillian Murphy or Naomie Harris would be back in it, because they're too busy.

The strangest project that Boyle's name has been attached to is Alien Love Triangle, originally planned as part of a trilogy but then supposedly scrapped when the other two parts were turned into full-length films. Recently, the movie showed up on Miramax's 2005 release schedule again, so we asked Boyle if he thought it was really going to be released. "It's going to have to now, because Miramax are jettisoning all of their product" he joked. "It's been done for longer than three years now, but it's like 25 minutes long, so it's kind of like an orphan, because it doesn't have any partners. It was meant to have two other thirty-minute films to go with it and to be released. When the other two they commissioned got turned into full-length films, Miramax's instinct was that they wanted us to turn this into a full-length film, but we always thought it was ideal as it is. We tried to come up with two other parts to go with it, but we never did satisfactorily."

Still, he was glad to tell us the premise for what seemed like it would be a rather short film. "It's very funny and silly," he told us. "It's got Courtney Cox, Heather Graham-Roller Girl from 'Boogie Nights'-and Kenneth Branagh as the Englishman, and it's about aliens. Courtney Cox plays a male alien inside Courtney Cox's body, which is an interesting place to be we'd all agree, and Heather Graham is a female alien who arrives to take Courtney Cox back." He didn't think that anyone should waste ten dollars if the movie is released in its 25 minute form.

Boyle also mentioned that Millions screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce is writing an adaptation of The Odyssey, which he thought was a "barking mad idea". Boyle said that he's usually not interested in historical or period films, because he likes modern films about modern life, but Boyce wants him to read the script when he finishes.

Millions opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, March 11, before expanding across the country. Look for more with Danny Boyle and his two young stars in the next week or two.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Ghostboy

My two cents: Millions is quite charming - a very nice family film.

modage

i will (hopefully) be seeing it monday with Boyle in attendance.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

Keep 'em guessing
Director Danny Boyle can shift film styles like drivers shift gears. Source: Los Angeles Times



Having first bounded onto the international filmmaking scene with the twisted money-mystery "Shallow Grave" and the drug-soaked excitement of the epoch-defining "Trainspotting," British director Danny Boyle has subsequently continued to leap from genre to genre, style to style. As a follow-up to his terrifyingly scabby, digital-video horror film "28 Days Later," a surprise hit, he has reemerged with the sweetly endearing, kid-friendly "Millions."

Working with "28 Days Later" cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, this time employing an eye-popping color palette and a handful of nifty visual effects, and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, best known for his work with filmmaker Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People"), Boyle has crafted a film that emulates a child's point of view without condescension. In telling its story of two brothers, one who has visions of saints while the other sees only a world of pound notes and Euro coins, Boyle has drawn out two well-rounded performances from his young stars, Alexander Nathan Etel and Lewis Owen McGibbon.

After "Trainspotting" you made "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Beach" and then seemed to retreat from Hollywood filmmaking. Are you happy with your current relationship to the notion of Hollywood?

Yeah, very much so. I've learned a lot about what I'm good at. I'm still ambitious, but I like surprising people by being a bit off the radar and then popping up with it finished. I really admire people who can work with big sums of money, and I love watching those movies. The big thing you learn is that when you've got a budget that size, it increases the number of people who work on the film. I like it much smaller, a family-type atmosphere among the crew. You can't learn everybody's name on a big crew. So you learn what film gets the best out of you as a director.

Your films are all very different from one another, especially moving from "28 Days Later" to "Millions." Are you ever concerned about losing whatever audience you might build up from film to film?

One of the terrors of making a film is you think you're making the same film again and again. I worry that there are ingredients in "Millions" that are a bit like "Shallow Grave," I worry my films are too similar. I'm always amused when people start interviews by saying, "Wow, this is so different." It obviously comes across like that, but you don't always feel that when you're doing it. We were lucky "28 Days Later" was a big hit because you get a lot of credits, and we kept the budget down on this so we were able to do what we wanted. We didn't have to worry about that clash of taste which was involved in juxtaposing that film and this film. Although I'm still the same person and they feel coherent to me, I'm sure it'll be difficult for some people to get on board.

Right from the start, when the boy has his first vision of a saint, the audience knows this is a different kind of kid's movie. And then when the saint starts puffing away on a joint, you know it's really different.

The joint was a really interesting question. The temperature of the times in Western life, especially here but in the U.K. as well, is very anti-tobacco, anti-cigarette. The question was, is it going to be a cigarette? What it's going to be? I said I think it should be a joint, she should light up a joint. The whole thing she says is, it doesn't matter up there — everything's easy. You only have to worry about that kind of thing down here. I just thought it was lovely, they don't stand on dogma. And I thought they would be very relaxed like that, and that's how I always imagined it. My mom was a very strict Catholic, a very devout Irish Catholic, but as a person she was so easy about everything. So I felt the saints should be portrayed like that. St. Peter swears a bit.

What was it like working with the two young boys? Did you have to recalibrate your directing style to get the best performances out of them?

You think you're going to guide them through and as soon as you do that, you can see your fingerprints all over them. It's horrible. We did some things early on, and when I took a look at it, it was like I was stuffing things into their mouths, like I had them by the back of the neck. It's fake. They're so gossamer-fine because they're not actors, especially the little one, that if you interfere you can spot it really quickly. So you have to find a different way to let the film flow through them.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Pwaybloe

Yes, well, suddenly the journalist died from a massive heart attack.  

Thanks for being sympathetic.

MacGuffin

Yeoh May Appear in Danny Boyle Movie

Former Bond girl Michelle Yeoh will appear in a science fiction movie called "Sunshine" directed by Danny Boyle of "Trainspotting" fame, a magazine has reported.

The script is written by Alex Garland, who wrote the novel "The Beach" which was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Yeoh said in an interview published in the September issue of Prestige Hong Kong magazine.

"They have an amazing team ... I've wanted to work with these people for a long while," Yeoh was quoted as saying.

She reportedly said she plays a botanist. The movie was to start filming in late August in a London studio, Yeoh said, according to the report.

Yeoh, an ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, also said filming "Memoirs of a Geisha," made the action star think she should be more feminine.

"Doing a movie like 'Memoirs' was good in the sense that it tickled me into thinking, 'Well, maybe I have to be a little more feminine.' But after two hours of that, I said, 'Fine, OK, I did that,'" Yeoh was quoted as saying.

Yeoh previously appeared in the James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies" and the martial arts hit "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

The Weinsteins Reveal Upcoming Projects
Source: Variety

Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, is being brought on to direct Solomon Grundy, based on a Dan Gooch book which is described as a literary fantasy novel based on the classic poem. The book has been adapted for the screen by Robert Nelson Jacobs, who is also working on the Marvel Comics adaptation of Werewolf By Night.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Boyle unleashes 'Tower' power
Thriller to be set in Johannesburg skyscraper
Source: Variety

Danny Boyle will helm "Ponte Tower," an uncompromising thriller set entirely in one of the tallest skyscrapers in Africa.

The 54-storey cylindrical Ponte Tower in Johannesburg, South Africa, was considered one of the city's most desirable addresses and a powerful symbol of white affluence under apartheid when it was built in 1975. Local papers even dubbed it "heaven on earth."

But despite breathtaking views the hulking urban landmark disintegrated into a wind-ravaged hellhole infected by gangs, guns and drugs likened by some to the Tower of Babel.

Michael Thomas ("Scandal," "Backbeat") is writing the script, which is loosely based on a book by German novelist Norman Ohler about a girl from Soweto who moves to Ponte Tower at the end of apartheid and comes under the control of a charming druglord.

The project has attracted lottery funding from the U.K. Film Council's Development Fund and is planned as a co-production with South Africa.

Gina Carter, co-producer on "24 Hour Party People" and producer on "Bright Young Things" and "Snowcake," produces alongside neophyte producer Frank Kunster.

Boyle, Thomas and Carter will shortly be travelling to South Africa to develop the project with on-the-ground assistance from Moonlighting Films in Johannesburg.

Boyle has previously directed successful big screen adaptations of tomes, including Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" and Alex Garland's "The Beach."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Danny Boyle tackles 'Slum Dog Millionaire'
Exclusive: The 'Sunshine' helmer tells us all about his next project.
Source: Timeout.com

I spoke to the always affable Danny Boyle yesterday for our 'Sunshine' podcast, and when the subject turned to his next film, it seems I had my facts wrong. Rather than making South African-set thriller 'Ponte Tower' (as previously reported), Boyle is about to start work on a very different sort of film, as he himself explained.

'It's called 'Slum Dog Millionaire', it's based on a true story, and it's about a kid from the slums of Mumbai, who has nothing – he's ill educated, he's illiterate – and he goes on the Hindi version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' and wins it. And they can't believe that he's done it. They think he's cheated. They think he's getting signals from embedded chips in his body, or that there are people coughing in the audience, but he won it.

'What's clever about the film is that the structure shows you how he knows the answers. Certain things have happened to him in his life and they happen to ask questions about those things. But the real reason he's on the show is to get in touch with the girl he loves but has lost in the chaos of Mumbai, and all he knows is that she watches the show religiously. So he's not even there to win the money, but that's when you win I suppose, when you're not even trying.'

Simon Beaufoy ('The Full Monty') has written the script, with filming set to start on location in Mumbai soon. And as for 'Ponte Tower', that film is still very much on Boyle's horizon, with Michael Thomas currently working on the script.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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grand theft sparrow

I admire his desire to be diverse but this is better left to Mike Newell.  Still, he could knock this one off, make it ten times better than almost anyone else would, and then go and do Ponte Tower.

MacGuffin

Exclusive: Danny Boyle Getting Animated?

ComingSoon.net just spent some time talking to director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy about their rags to riches love story Slumdog Millionaire, which is the toast of this year's Toronto Film Festival.

When asked what he might do next, Boyle was slightly tentative because he's not sure whether it would happen or not, but he hopes to reunite with his "Millions" screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce in doing an animated movie based on Terry Pratchett's children book "Truckers", which is the first part of his "Bromeliad trilogy."

The books are about a race of tiny people from another world called Nomes, living and trying to survive among humans, who discover their secret history, which prompts them to try to return home.

If the project does get rolling at DreamWorks as planned, it would be an interesting new challenge for the filmmaker coming off of his ambitious Bombay-based epic, but Boyle realizes how complicated doing an animated film would be, which would be one of the deciding factors in whether he does it or not.

"It's a weird different discipline, it's very strange," he admitted to us during our interview earlier. "You're more like a ringmaster, kind of organizing this huge army of illustrators who can change the movie. It's really weird. They often do scripts and they have no gags in them at all, but then you see the finished film and it's full of funny gags, and they say that it's not in the script, that all comes through the process of the animators. It's like learning the skill of letting certain ones of them off their leash to do the gags."

Slumdog Millionaire is scheduled to open in select cities on November 28.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

EXCLUSIVE: Danny Boyle May Direct Second '28 Days Later' Follow-Up, Plays Coy On Setting

Just like the diseased themselves, it seems like Danny Boyle's popular don't call them zombies horror movie series will keep coming and coming and coming, the director confirmed to MTV News.

Well, maybe.

"There's a bit of discussion going on about it at the moment," Boyle said of what I'm going to start calling "28 Months Later," the third in a series which began with "28 Days Later" in 2002 and continued with "28 Weeks Later" last year.

We wouldn't put it past Boyle to blow us away again, but for the life of us we can't figure out to continue a franchise which seems to acceptably conclude with each installment without becoming narratively ridiculous. Turns out, Boyle's not so sure either.

"I have an idea for it [but] I've got to present it and see what people think really because it might be silly really," he laughed.

What's the idea? Where's the film set? Boyle won't say, insisting that discovering his secret is "part of the joy of it, really."

On the matter of whether or not he would direct the film, though, the "Slumdog Millionaire" helmer was much less coy, admitting that "it was a possibility."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Danny Boyle On '28 Months Later': It's Not Called '28 Months Later'!
Source: MTV

Recently, reports spread across the net that "Slumdog Millionaire" helmer Danny Boyle was considering hopping back into the saddle to direct "28 Months Later," the second sequel to his smash 2002 film about a viral outbreak and its devastating consequences.

True enough, Boyle told MTV News, re-iterating what he told us back in September.

Only, seriously people, Boyle laughed, stop calling it "28 Months Later"!

"It don't think it will be called '28 Months Later,' that's all I can say," Boyle insisted of the sequel, remaining maddeningly coy on other details.

The first film in the series explored the aftereffects of a viral outbreak on London. The second film focused on what happened when the military tried to repopulate the area after presumably containing the threat. The third film? Who knows, Boyle said, revealing that he has an idea but that nothing is set in stone.

"I mean, it's absolutely not written yet, but there's a prospect of an idea and the way these ideas start is you just suddenly get a little glimpse," Boyle confessed.

What else? Not to go all Columbo on you here at the end, but Boyle, well, he does have just one more thing he wants from you: for the love of all that is holy, stop calling his infected monsters zombies.

"There was an article in the paper the other day by Simon Pegg. He wrote this article begging people to let zombies stumble again and not run. He was trying to turn the tide back because everyone has zombies running now. He's like, 'No, please. Can we go back to the old days when you knew you could get away from them?' That was sort of the thrill. These idiots didn't lock themselves in car and died," Boyle laughed. "That's why I keep saying, 'It's not a zombie movie, everyone. It's not a zombie movie!' Because the aficionados - it's sacrilegious what you're doing by changing things like that. They're infected. They're not zombies."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Danny Boyle's 'Solomon Grundy' Delayed Due To Perceived 'Benjamin Button' Similarities
Source: MTV

Thanks to both overwhelmingly positive responses and its feel-good message, Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" has already been pegged by many prognosticators as an early Oscar favorite, alongside other yet to be released films like "Revolutionary Road" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

But no matter what happens between now and the February Oscar telecast, David Fincher's "Button" has already gotten the best of Boyle, the director smiled, forcing him to temporarily abandon his previously announced next project.

Boyle's "Solomon Grundy," based on the popular nursery rhyme character who was "born on a Monday" and "died on a Sunday" (and who bears no relation to the hideous D.C. zombie villain and occasional foe of Superman and Batman), is momentarily shelved, he revealed exclusively to MTV News, because of perceived similarities to "Button," which follows the life of a man who lives his whole life backwards.

"It's sort of a crossover with 'Benjamin Button' only they've done it backwards, so it really fell apart because of the competition from that one," Boyle confessed of the project. "It is a wonderful idea, and it's got really potential still. Maybe. No one knows what 'Benjamin Button' is going to be like, so maybe it won't be similar to that at all. Maybe it will feel really different to that, so [that 'Solomon'] might come alive again."

Wiki tells us that the nursery rhyme is a sort of riddle for the seven ages of man, itself a reference to Shakespeare's "As You Like It" ("All the world's a stage," etc etc.) Infancy, childhood, lover, old-age – you get the drift.

Should the movie ever get made, though, don't expect a Button-esque transformation of a big star through all those stages, Boyle said, referring to Brad Pitt's turn in the upcoming film. In fact, don't expect ANY star to carry the movie.

"'Solomon Grundy' is a story about a guy who ages seven days. He lives his whole life in seven days. He's born on a Monday, christened on a Tuesday, grew up on Wednesday, marries on Thursday, took on Friday, and it was like that," Boyle explained. "And we were going to cast seven different actors to play the part because he starts at zero and ends up at eighty-five."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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