CraveOnline: I want to talk a bit about this ad campaign. I assume you don’t have total control over this, but it goes by you, the posters that introduce the various characters?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Mm-hmm.
How do you feel that that helps sell Jack Ryan? Do you feel like this is a new introduction, or that you’re selling the style?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Well, we wish we had control. [Laughs]
This isn’t exactly your idea?
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: It’s not a criticism of it actually. […] You know what? It’s rare that you have four movie stars in a movie, and that’s what allowed this particular thing to occur. I think what’s interesting is you’re sort of structuring in a different way. I hope the message… when I first saw them I really like them. I don’t know how you felt. But I felt what’s cool about it was it tells the audience there’s a lot of different pieces in this puzzle, and I think that’s a good thing to communicate.
Kevin Costner is one of your big stars. There’s a story going around that he was originally going to be Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October.
Mace Neufeld: Oh, absolutely.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Well, he was originally offered…
Mace Neufeld: He wasn’t going to be it. I offered to him.
Was that ever a point of conversation when you cast him in this movie? “Oh, now you want on board, don’t you Kevin…?”
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: [Laughs]
Mace Neufeld: [Laughs] “Well, here we are, doing another movie together 22 years later.”
Was it an easy decision for him this time, do you think?
Mace Neufeld: [to di Bonaventura] Well, you talked to him.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I don’t know. He liked the universe of it. And he liked the fact that… the mentor thing has a funny connotation, you know? Because actually he’s an agent in the field. It’s a different character than what’s been presented before. I think he said it at the press conference, about usually you’re sitting behind a desk on the phone going “Hurry up!”
But the truth is, I think that’s right, and we were able to use what made him a movie star because he’s in the field. So when he carries a gun he carries a certain amount of weight with it, and you believe that Kevin’s capable of really helping Chris. You may not believe it from a not-movie star quite as much. But there is an accumulated baggage of trust that we’ve built into your movie stars, I think on a certain level, particularly ones like Kevin who have played the good guy, who have played the hero. You have an expectation for it. You have a built in sort of trust for it, and that allows you to do something different with the older characters than you would normally do.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
