Renny Harlin Quotes

I wish I'd made 'Warrior,' and I wish I'd made 'Drive.'

The first draft of 'Ex Machina' is extremely different than the finished film. That would be like 10% of the original draft stayed into the shooting script.

'Die Hard' was a really awesome experience, but I was too young to understand what a big film it was.

Selling a film option and getting a studio on board can be a slow process, and until things are official, you never want to spill the beans.

My solo novel 'Icons' was optioned by Alcon Entertainment, the folks who made the 'Beautiful Creatures' movie, and that's gotten as far as a script, but no news yet.

When I did my first film, I was in college; I did it as a senior thesis. The original version was 60 minutes. But I developed it and made it almost 90 minutes. In 2007, it premiered in Venice, and I stopped in London to develop a script with my dad that fell apart, and we started 'Gravity.'

I love 'Rambo.'

Not many people get that chance to have multiple studios wanting you to make a movie with them.

A pivotal moment for me as a filmmaker was when I saw 'Total Recall,' the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, which was the first movie I saw in America.

You get the initial script, and then things sort of change here and there, but the whole thing is this sort of mushy collaboration, which I love.

As for action, yes 'Wanted' was a success in the action genre. But not to the extent of 'Dabangg.'

When I was approached for the Kannada version of the film, the makers said it would be their version of 'The Dirty Picture,' based on the life of Silk Smitha. So, I asked them for the exact story. But, I was shocked after hearing the complete story. It was neither like the Bollywood version, nor about the life of Silk Smitha.

I would love to have more original material developed. 'Pacific Rim' has made that slightly more possible.

I'm not sure if my story will become a movie. Some of my western friends sent my story to people they know in the movie industry. But one consistent response was there aren't any main western characters in my story, so it's unlikely to be made into a movie in English.

It's a very difficult thing to adapt a piece of existing material into film.

I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature.

Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.

Keanu and I were in New York, I was prepping John Wick 2. And when Keanu [Reeves], [writer] Derek Kolstad, and myself sat down and wrote the character, it was completely, one hundred percent based on Laurence Fishburne. Like, in my head I saw this guy.

What happens often is the script is written and once the director comes on board you have lots of conversations and it mutates again.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.

There's no need there to sit with the filmmaker for 11 years to develop the script, or go round the world raising money.

I read Animal House and I said, "I will burn down a house to be in this. I have to be in this movie." I read 1941 and I went, "Well, if Steven Spielberg likes it..." But it just wasn't on the page. It was a very big, unwieldy thing, and there were so many characters. It was fun to shoot, but I didn't know what the core of it was.

When Howard Marks came out of prison, years later, I met him at a concert in South Wales; I was a young whippersnapper and Howard was kind of an outlaw hero. I said to him - and it's on tape, a cousin of his filmed our meeting - I said, "If you write a book, I want to play you in a movie." He said, "Let's shake on it," and we did. Thirteen years later, there we were, making the movie.

We originally actually wrote Franco's part [in the Pineapple Express] for me and the part I ultimately played just for someone else in general. Then when we got Franco involved we thought it was a good idea to switch the roles. I think it worked really well.

I mean, Deadpool has a script, but it's a very complicated process to find the right filmmaker. We'll see.