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That was the test Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich faced with In the Lost Lands, their new dark fantasy Western movie, based on the George R.R. Martin short story of the same name. The film — the first movie adaptation of Martin’s work since 1987 — is a largely faithful adaptation, albeit with some radically new elements. In particular, there’s a new central antagonist: a religious cult the protagonists (Jovovich and Dave Bautista) have to contend with.
Anderson and Jovovich started dating after working together on 2002’s Resident Evil, and In the Lost Lands is the seventh time they’ve collaborated as director and star. But it’s the first time the married couple have partnered as producers on a project, adding a new element to their long-standing collaboration.
Polygon spoke with Anderson and Jovovich on a video call about In the Lost Lands’ eerie Western fantasy setting, the importance of Martin’s work to them, using Unreal Engine to world-build before shooting, and how their partnership has changed over their years of working together. And yes, the Hollywood power couple did hold hands during nearly the entire interview.
Polygon: What did you like most about the world Martin creates in his version of “In the Lost Lands”?
Paul W.S. Anderson: I liked two things. One, that it was a dark adult fairy tale. It’s got a very clear message: Be careful what you wish for. I’ve always been fascinated with the original fairy tales, the dark ones — the version of “The Little Mermaid” where the mermaid dies at the end, the original Brothers Grimm. So this was an opportunity to tell an adult fairy tale, which suggested it should have a unique visual look as well.
And then the other thing that appealed to me is clearly, George’s story was partly patterned on a Western. It reminded me of spaghetti Westerns that I loved when I was a kid: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More. Movies where two characters went off on an adventure in a hostile land, and they kind of betrayed one another, but then kind of came to love one another. And I thought those two things, the dark fairy tale and the Western combined, could lead to a fairly unique visual look.
One of my favorite shots in the movie is when Dave’s character is knowingly walking into an ambush and you see under the brim of his hat, and there’s a tiny beam of light just shining on his eyes.
Anderson: It’s very Charles Bronson.
Milla Jovovich: George is one of my favorite writers. And this was a short story, so we had to really build out the world a lot. And it was important for me to keep the basis of the heart of the story, but at the same time, to allow Paul and I to bring our sensibilities and our world and our fan base to meet George in the middle, in a way that no one’s seen before. Because he’s had such great success on television with Game of Thrones, et cetera, but this was the first time one of his books was going to be on the big screen. [Ed. note: Martin’s previous movie adaptation, Nightflyers, went straight to home video.]
So it was really about creating a world that was unique and wasn’t going to remind people of Westeros. It had to be expanding the George Universe into something completely different and very special. Paul did that extremely well, working with [visual effects supervisor] Dennis Berardi, and using the Unreal Engine as a tool to world-build, which took a year in advance.
Anderson: Yeah, we started building the world a year before we started shooting, which meant that when we were shooting, we could actually give live playback to the actors, so Milla and Dave could see the environments they were in. We would build the foreground and the mid-ground, but sometimes the deep background only existed in the computer. I think for a lot of actors, just having a blue screen there is very disorienting. It doesn’t really give you the environment, but the advantage of this was, we could actually show the environment to Milla and Dave on the day.
What was important to you about the new elements you added to this story, especially the church and the revolution arc?
Jovovich: The original story is a short, and we definitely needed to add a common enemy that people could stand behind and dislike.
Anderson: We needed an antagonist for the movie, and it features in a lot of George’s work, the split between church and state. And we felt that was an interesting element to introduce that didn’t feel too alien to George’s world. Obviously he responded very well to it.
What’s the biggest thing that’s changed in the way you two have worked together since you started collaborating?
Anderson: For this movie, Milla has taken a producing credit for the very first time, which is a reflection of what she’s done on all of the movies, really. I mean, she probably should have taken a producing credit a long time ago. She’s always had a hand in putting the projects together, and a really good say in the scripts especially. So this is the first time she’s coming front and center in that regard. So, very nice to work with my producing partner.
Jovovich: It was exciting to be a real part of the process. The script took many years and many different iterations to complete, and the world took a long time to create, and it was all a real passion project for us. It wasn’t something that we were going to just, Oh, hey, here’s a studio, here’s a script, whatever, let’s do it. This was important.
This was an incredible property, and we have so much respect for George — we really wanted to deliver something that people had never seen before, something mythological, something bigger than ourselves, something that really belongs in the land of dark fantasy, that could potentially be in the Brothers Grimm.
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