The only guiding principle you can use is to make something that you want to see.
I'll tell the only thing I know in this business, I have had the absolute privilege of making movies that I loved when I was a kid and loved my whole life.
Whether a studio partner is 50/50 with us, or we do 100%, or we do 75% or 90% and for the most part they just distribute, whether that's Warner Brothers or now Universal, it's always a unique situation. Every movie is almost like a start up company.
We just believe in what we make and we're in a very fortunate position to be able to make stuff regardless of what model that follows.
[In remake] you've got to have something new to say, or technology that wasn't available, or a new chapter that kind of speaks to this generation of fans. They've got some unique assets, so we're certainly discussing those things.
I'm not the worlds biggest remake guy, meaning finding titles and saying, "Hey it's got some brand awareness, let's just make a movie."
I've got to say that when you're able to work with people like this, whether it's Gareth or Guillermo or Zack Snyder or Chris Nolan, it's a privilege to do this and I've never lost the awe, the awe factor of just going in and watching peoples reactions to what you've spent, in a lot of cases, years working on. That's a good way to put it, I love what I do and it's a privilege to do it.
Whether it's Batman, Superman, Watchmen, the 300 story, we just make stuff that I want to see.
I don't want to talk about anybody else's movie, but I understand fan skepticism when you're like, "Oh yeah, a Godzilla movie." Which, by the way, our first movie was Batman Begins and was not dissimilar from questions and conversations from people about where the Batman franchise was, so I get it.
I've been a film geek since I was a little kid and to start with an idea and then get a stack of papers with words on it called a script, then storyboarding the art, and you sit with these guys and now all the sudden it's a movie, and to see fans reactions to it when you put it out.
When I watch the movie, which is I don't know how many times I've done now with editing and everything, I walk out giddy just because I feel like that's the movie that I want to see.
Comic-Con is always something that we- we love Comic-Con and we generally have a big presence there. So we usually have something to say there, and just as things come together.
When it was time to talk about Warcraft we took our time, we knew what the story was going to be, we had a field general in Duncan Jones. Same thing with Godzilla, we kind of measured twice, cut once.
We love being in business with Guillermo [Del Toro]and frankly that movie, if you look it up, did I think more business than the first X-Men, did more than Batman Begins, our first movie, did more than Superman Returns, The Fast and the Furious, Star Trek- so for a movie that was an original property that we made up it's done really well.
We got on a moving train there. That's more of a financing arrangement on that [Dracula] film. It would be disingenuous to say we're producing it. So it was really about getting into business with our partner at Universal.
For us it's always about making sure that there's substance, that things are well thought out, they're real, they're going to happen versus just haphazardly making Hollywood type announcements. So that's where we are there [on Comic-Con], just making sure that when we do something to say that it's something.
With Godzilla, I've been a huge fan my whole life.
Each one [movie] is very important to us and from a fiscal responsibility, filmmakers understand that it's highly personal for us and they've been great about it.
I also think that filmmakers understand, we don't have to make twenty movies a year, we make four to six.
Godzilla it's not a remake, it's our chapter. I think what I'm most excited about is all the principles that we laid out in the beginning, I feel like we were able to hit on those things.
When you watch Monsters you understand that the effects he did on his laptop were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, I was astounded.More than a few people said to me, "That's kind of a crazy thing to go from that level of film and then hand over Godzilla".
The truth is at Legendary we really make movies that we want to see, and someday I'm sure that won't work but - I remember, it's obviously a completely different thing, but our first movie was Batman Begins, and there was a lot of things about Batman back then, and there was this guy named Christopher Nolan, that seemed to have worked out okay with him at the helm.
