Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Comic-Con has started a week early for me. All last week I’ve been rushing to finalize Con interviews and schedules as well as dealing with a lot of pre-con stories that’ll be going up. I have worked out a nice exclusive little bit with Marvel about a certain book adaptation they’re doing where you’ll get exclusive art and interviews with the guys behind the scenes and then this fell into my lap. I was offered an interview with an unknown person who was attached to an unknown comic property. I had to agree to interview this person before I would be told who it was and what the property was. The announcement would be made Sunday night and the idea was to do the interview Saturday and run it Monday morning. Lucky for me it was an interesting actor doing an interesting project. Below you’ll find my very short chat with Djimon Hounsou about Thulsa Doom. There are no writers signed and no director attached, so there wasn’t much to talk to about the production side, so you’ll see we focus more on why Hounsou wants to do this character and where he’ll start off with him. Enjoy the chat!
Quint: Hey, how is it going man?
Djimon Hounsou: Good. How are you doing man?
Quint: I’m doing very well. I heard the news, congratulations!
Djimon Hounsou: Oh, thank you. I’m very excited.
Quint: I only know the character of Thulsa Doom really from James Earl Jones’s portrayal of him. I have read some Robert E. Howard, but not a whole lot. I actually just read a lot of SOLOMON KANE recently, but I love the little bit I have read, so you are going to have to fill me in a little bit on Thulsa Doom as a character and what attracted you to him.
Djimon Hounsou: Well, the argument I think is the most exciting to see as a human being is how one gets so devoted to his people to a point that they go as a far as selling their own souls for the sake of their people. That’s what I think was intriguing about Thulsa Doom, so basically the film will showcase on the origins of the flawed hero and show how his road to hell was paved by the goodness and good intentions for his people.
Quint: Yeah, you are hitting at the right spot now. With the success already of THE DARK KNIGHT, very much a lot of the central themes of that are personal choice and having to make the wrong choice for the right reasons, you know?
Djimon Hounsou: Right. Exactly! The wrong choices for the right reasons, but I say are they justified? Are those reasons justifiable, you know? Obviously that’s for the audience to look at it and see to what extent it is okay. I think that is just sort of pieces that happen, I feel, in third world countries, political attribute to the people in third world countries. They just came out of colonization, they are trying to… The locals of third world countries were basically like caged animals and after a period of time, when an animal has been caged for a period of time, when you let him loose they basically will go all crazy and all over the place, so you can’t really contain them if you had never given them freedom before, so now you are giving them freedom and then everybody is starting to want to do their own thing and it gets quite corrupted there a little bit and trying to cut down that corruption. The leaders are bad at those places with the treatment inflicted and to what or how they are trying their best to educate your people at the same time, you know, give the best a country has to offer, but at the same time not to sell yourself entirely. You get my point. I think it’s quite amazing to watch the evolution of under developed countries in the world. I think it’s quite amazing to see the conditioning of the human mind, so those are the some of aspects that I sort of drew on Thulsa Doom and I thought it would be quite an amazing story to uncover suddenly. It will be an exciting story to watch.
Quint: Since I’m not all that familiar with his back story, was he a sorcerer as well back during his fall?
Djimon Hounsou: Yes.
Quint: So then you are going to have a lot of fun with some pretty crazy fantasy elements I take it.
Djimon Hounsou: Oh yeah and I mean you have it all. You have the fantasy, you have the action, you have the character that is just so well driven and if you look… The way I always look at Thulsa Doom and suddenly the scope of Thulsa Doom, I always compare it to epic stories like BRAVEHEART and GLADIATOR or something like that, you know?
Quint: Sweet, so what stage are you guys at right now? You have the property optioned, do you have writers hired on yet?
Djimon Hounsou: Those things are somewhat in the works and I can’t tell you too much on that.
Quint: Of course.
Djimon Hounsou: But we are working! We won’t have something to show for some duration.
Quint: Do you think that you are going to go out to a director to help guide the screenwriting process or are you going to get the script first and then hire a director or do you know?
Djimon Hounsou: No no no, we are obviously going to have a script and then go for the top directors in the industry.
Quint: Very cool, well I… unless there’s an aspect of this that you don’t think that we have talked about, I think that’s about all I have for this early stage.
Djimon Hounsou: Yeah, and it is an early stage. Just be patient and you will know more about it shortly.
It’s very brief, I know, but I do appreciate Mr. Hounsou taking the time to chat with me a little about it. Hopefully we’ll get to talk again when… well, when there’s a little more to talk about. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com>
