With the release of a well received teaser trailer, and with anticipation for his Godzilla remake at an all time high, Gareth Edwards has decided to give some insight as to how he received the coveted director’s chair. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, he spoke about having a positive initial meeting with Legendary Pictures and how it led to receiving the job.
“The meeting with Legendary [Pictures] went so well… that when I left I photographed their building to remember it, because I thought ‘Oh, something just happened there. I think I’m going to end up doing something with them.’ That was such a great meeting that we had together,” he said.
“We’re all on the same page of the movies we want to make. But then six months went by and I started working on other things, then suddenly I got an email from my Hollywood agent saying ‘call this number now.’ I went home and called the number at it was my agent and he said ‘Okay, are you sitting down?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘just sit down. Ok, so Legendary just called, and they want to know if you’d be interested in directing ‘Godzilla’? And my honest reaction was ‘holy f***.’ Then, they were saying, ‘are you a Godzilla fan?’ because I was silent for awhile. I happened to have had the re-released 1954 version out on my shelf. It was right in front of me, and I was like ‘Yeah, I’m looking at it right now,’ which they were very relieved about.“
To further heighten our excitement for the film, Warner Bros. has released several new photos and an additional poster for Godzilla, all of which can be viewed below. Not a whole lot is revealed here, but the poster is a nice bit of artwork and fits in well with the marketing that we’ve seen for the film thus far.
Due to the quality and positive word of mouth surrounding his directorial debut, the 2010 science fiction film Monsters, I believe that Edwards was the right choice to make a more grounded, feasible vision of Godzilla. With his debut, he proved that he could create a surreal, realistic vision of a monster attack on a very limited budget of $500,000, further stoking the flames of anticipation as to what he could accomplish with Hollywood resources at his disposal.
With a great cast in tow, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, and everyone’s favorite science teacher turned crystal meth kingpin, Bryan Cranston, Godzilla has the potential to be one of the best summer popcorn flicks in recent memory.
After Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s campy, overly comedic take on the material crashed and burned back in 1998, it seemed to spell doom for further installments of the Godzilla franchise. With the way this outing is shaping up though, I believe we will be watching the continuing adventures of Gareth Edwards’ mutant lizard for summers to come.
Godzilla roars into theatres on May 16th, 2014.
