Some films just take time.
The script for "Takers" has been floating around Hollywood for about 10 years. Atlanta film producer Will Packer has been working on it for three. He says it's the typical long, sometimes circuitous route that films take to get made in Hollywood, particularly if you're having to work around "a situation" for one of your lead actors.
On Friday, Packer and director John Luessenhop will release the action thriller about a group of longtime friends who bankroll their extravagant lifestyle with one very carefully planned bank robbery each year. The movie stars Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, Paul Walker, T.I., Chris Brown, Michael Ealy and Zoe Saldana.
Packer talked recently about putting the cast together, his relationship with Elba and T.I. and upcoming projects that will bring more filmmaking to Georgia.
Q: Are you closely wrapped up in the casting? It seems like a lot of the same actors show up in your films.
A: I’m always very involved with casting. As a producer, I oversee all aspects of production and distribution. I’m working with Idris on this film and he is literally one of my best friends in Hollywood. He’s a great guy and a great talent. He will be looked at as leading the new generation, or his generation I should say, of actors in Hollywood.
He will be seen in the next 10 to 15 years the way Denzel is looked at now. He takes his craft seriously and he’s on his way. And then Chris [Brown], we’ve done three movies together. But T.I.’s someone I’ve been wanting to work with. We’re both from the ATL, and we knew each other from around the Atlanta entertainment scene. I really wanted to work with Michael Ealy and Zoe Saldana. I didn’t know Matt Dillon or Paul or Hayden [Christensen] before this film, but I’m familiar with their work and felt fortunate to get them on board.
Q: If the script’s been around for a decade, what does this cast bring to the story?
A: They bring a different kind of appeal than what you normally see for an action movie. The way Hollywood looks at action movies is that they appeal to men. The tried-and-true quality of an action film, it speaks to men and young men.
I felt like if we put a group of attractive, sexy, well-dressed men in an action movie that we could open up a whole other demo: women.
Q: Is there a reason behind Idris not having a love interest or being from London by way of the Caribbean?
A: I’ve been wanting to do something with Idris where we could use his accent, and this was a good opportunity because we wanted this crew to be very diverse. The backstory is this crew came from all different parts of the country… I wanted Idris as the leader of the crew.
Q: What were the challenges in making this film around T.I.’s real-life run-ins with the law?
A: We were going into pre-production prior to T.I.’s situation there in Atlanta. When it happened, we put everything on hold. There was never any question that we weren’t going to wait for him. I have a very close relationship with him. The head of the studio that I produced this for, Screen Gems, agreed and we both had the belief that you stick with people. If somebody’s right for a role or you have a relationship with somebody, you don’t abandon that because they’re going through challenges.
So we waited. We waited for him to become available again and then we rolled right back into production.
As far as the challenges, we worked around his schedule. Obviously he had some limits he had to work within. Mainly, he had all these community service hours he had to do while we were filming. About every day that T.I. worked on set, he would bring a group of kids, and he and I had to work together to work out a time and a schedule and a place to house all these kids, but he brought them on set, and when everyone else would be eating lunch in between a really hectic and stressful shooting schedule, T.I. would be in a trailer or a room or wherever we had him set up, speaking to kids.
Q: What’s next with Rainforest — are you still planning for an African-American revision of “The Big Chill?” Is “Stomp the Yard 2” coming out soon?
A: Yeah, "Stomp the Yard Homecoming" is coming out in September, shot there in Atlanta. I'm also working on a biopic of a young woman named Kembe Smith who was sentenced to 24 years of federal jail time then pardoned by Bill Clinton on his way out of office. Basically, she was in a relationship with someone who was on the FBI’s most wanted list, but they threw the book at her. We’re going to tell her life story.
I’ve got an adaptation of Steve Harvey’s bestselling book ["Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man"]. I’m in the script phase on that. We’re not stopping at Rainforest. We’ve got a lot more stuff we’re going to be doing and shooting lots of stuff in Georgia.
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