BOOM! CEO Teases Wahlberg's '2 Guns' Film at Comic-Con 2013!

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

foreign Penny McLean I'm here with Ross Ritchie the producer of the new two guns film so how are you doing with Comic-Con so far how are you liking it well it's my 21st so uh consecutive so it's a lot of fun and there's absolutely nothing like it let me Jump Right In tell with your you produce you do comic books TV producing films yes how did it get started about boom Comics well as I like to say it's my fault and I started the company out of my spare bedroom apartments in 2005.

and so it's our eighth anniversary uh the eight years ago we debuted here at the show and so uh it's a lot of fun at the core of it my joke is that it beats working because if I have to get out of bed in the morning and I have to worry about comic books and I have to worry about a new movie script in my inbox you know let's be real I'm not I'm not working a day in my life and so uh it's a lot of fun you know Hollywood's very excited about comic book content and uh they're very interested in translating that into movies and television shows and so um through that process you know I think that my role is to be somebody who can stand between those two worlds and can help people who didn't grow up reading comic books but who are very sincere and excited about turning them into a movie help them understand you know in particular like with two guns the creator of two guns is a seminal Creator in our space who is a legendary talent but I can help them understand what he means to us in the medium here at the show and then I can also help guard the things that are special about the material but also be open to the ways that we need to turn it into a movie because it's not a comic book it's a movie at that stage and when you were growing up what was your favorite Comics that inspired you and actually touched you in a way to become who you are now oh well my first comic book was the Fantastic Four because one guy was made of fire and the other guy was made of rocks and I wanted to be made of fire made of rocks I was six and so I Was Bitten right then and I jumped in with both feet but a book that was really a seminal influence on me as a publisher it was a comic book from Oni press called whiteout and in that story there were no superpowers it was just a cool visual Thriller that happened uh at the North Pole and so I was really actually it was an Antarctica I screwed that up but um it really seized my imagination and opened some doors uh mentally and emotionally for me of like what you could do with the medium and that's the thing that's exciting about comic books is everyone knows superheroes but comic books aren't only superheroes and so I get excited about the things that we can do that are not superheroes the ways that the medium can grow and expand and change and since you're now with this incredible new movie that's going to be coming out August 2nd is that correct that's right yes tell me how it was with you or did you have any fingers in the mix of the cast selection and also with in mind the two main characters for Mark and Denzel with producing tell me with selecting the cast what you had in mind and the direction what you thought of and how it came out well it's the easiest phone call in the world to get because I loved the fighter and so after that film came out you get a phone call and they say you know Mark Wahlberg is interested in being in the movie and at that juncture you just say that's awesome you know and so uh the way kind of how Hollywood works is everybody's representation their agents and their managers and attorneys are all looking for these guys as next vehicle that will showcase their talents and so then when they they've read the material and they're interested a lot of times they'll approach the studio and say hey this is really cool and we love to do this and so when you get that phone call it's super easy and then the phone call that follows afterwards that says that Denzel wants to do it with Mark is just gets even better and so that part of the job is really really easy what's a little trickier is picking your partners and I think one of the things that worked for us is we picked Universal they were the right Studio that was very enthusiastic and understood the material and then when you pick the screenwriter that's critical because there's you know a nice paycheck to get to be made if you write a script and there's a fair number of guys that need to get paid because they need to write right and so you need to kind of right well you kind of have to suss out and understand on a creative basis who has a voice for the material and who really understands it and can take it to the next level and that was Blake Masters who wrote the script it really did a phenomenal job of really understanding the mechanics of what made the comic book special and how that could be translated onto the screen and once we had that exciting script that propelled the process and that's what attracted the stars and think fun while shooting on location anything that was just super duper funny or anything that was crazy that happened that you can think of that off the top of your head oh you know when you're dealing with you know Mark was so much fun because he would come in and he loved uh to improv and so he would do the script uh you know for five takes or six takes and then he had different ideas about how he wanted to change things and Denzel is much more intuitive in the way that he works and so one of the things that was clear with Denzel was that he enjoyed Mark bringing this different elements to the mix and so Denzel really opened himself up to be surprised by what Mark was going to do in the moment and enjoy that sort of almost like jazz improv of like you know Denzel would do it different each time and was looking to bring that ineffable something that you could capture in the moment and was very confident that the director baltazar could then take that and then get an edit that you know would be something something that would be special and so it was magic to watch that and wechter did you kind of changed things when he was thinking one way and you were thinking of another to keep kind of true from the comic as well no I mean that process was guarded in the script relative to um the things that made the comic book special the screenwriter understood and translated and that's what attracted the director and so when Balthazar wanted to make some alterations it might be to an action sequence but at the core that baltazar's the director and I I felt it was important to back his Creative Vision you know Contraband is an excellent film and the features that he's made back in his home country and Iceland are brilliant and he's a part of the new Noir movement and I thought that he was a great voice and I've never directed a movie before so I'm not going to tell a director how to how to do it and and all the ideas he had his craft is really true and so his ideas elevated the material and I think he did an excellent job with that and it was it was just a lot of fun to watch and I wanted to let you know we have something called the movie clock and this is an iPhone countdown clock for your iPhone obviously and we are been we've been checking in and counting down two guns since a year because it's a year ahead yes it's a year in advance very cool so you can go on there all the fans can check in when they're watching two guns you can see the trailer you can see the information this great interview with the producer and are you so now what's going on after two guns for you yeah well you know the uh everybody wants to know about three guns yeah and so what we're doing is we're publishing the three guns comic book uh the Wednesday after the movie comes out yeah so uh we're super excited about that and uh so then there's some chatter you know we need to have the movie open before we figure out if we're actually going to make the three guns movie and so just one step at a time but it's a lot of fun and you know we can tell uh sort of we can jump into the storytelling Waters in the comic book space that isn't nearly as as expensive as commissioning a a screenplay and going into production so that's that's sort of the next stage for us yeah and anything for you in the future for any more because I know that you produced a show for MTV Films as well oh uh uh yes it's been a while yeah you're talking about damnation yeah damnation and anything new I mean I'm kind of jumping from film to TV but anything else coming up for you that way yeah well the um we we do have some television shows that are in development but when they get picked up to Series this when we'll really start talking about it because until then it's just development you know and uh we have a number of features uh that are in development as well and some with universal and some with other Studios and so uh and there's a lot of you know we just acquired a company one of our competitors they're called Archaea and they're here at the show with a graphic novel that has the studio types buzzing but you know you just take it all one step at a time yeah yeah yeah it's a lot of fun I thank you so much I wish you I wait to see the down