Mike Reyes' interview with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura
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Short filmTranscript
00:00G.I. Joe. That last scene. First of all, bring in Michael Kelly. I love that you brought
00:04in Michael Kelly for this role because you bring that man and he kills any time.
00:08He killed it.
00:09But, now that we have this connection here, is there already an idea for that G.I. Joe
00:16Transformers crossover? And what made you even think of doing that?
00:20We don't think of it as a crossover either, which is interesting. I know, well the terminology
00:26for me, I find it limiting. We've been debating Joe, the fan base has been debating it forever.
00:36Come on, when are you going to do it? When are you going to do it? And we've wanted to
00:41do it, but we've never found really an organic situation to do it with. So what happened
00:46in this case is when we came up with a character who can't get a job, it was like the greatest
00:52idea that he's going to get the greatest job ever, right? And so it was really, otherwise
00:57it feels like you're just jamming it in. It feels like it's the payoff to the movie.
01:02Honestly, it was. It was just amazing to see that. And he's got the card in his hand, I'm
01:06thinking, okay, it's Nest, it's Sector 7, whatever. He slips in as G.I. Joe, I go jaw
01:10drops, like what?
01:12Well, you know what's funny is we shot two cards.
01:15What was the other one?
01:17Sector 7. Because we wanted to experience it ourselves. Because we were really, it was
01:23important to us that it felt very organic. So we didn't know until we saw it that it
01:28was like, okay, it works, you know, that we had that chill, that tingle down the spine
01:33that like, Joe.
01:35Well I was excited about it. Like I remember presenting it to the studio when I first turned
01:40in the draft of the script to the producers and everybody. And they're like, well, this
01:43is crazy. This is a leap. But I saw on everyone's faces, they were kind of excited about it.
01:47Like it led us to a new direction and all the possibilities now went like this. But
01:52I was just like, I feel like in terms of that specific franchise, like that's the one where
01:57I did have the toys growing up. I didn't have the Toys and Transformers growing up. My mom
02:00and dad never had them. Sad face. But in this particular case, the Joes I did have. And
02:05I was like, if there's a way that I can combine these and like create something natural and
02:10organic so fans could appreciate, but see them sort of working together, you know, would
02:14be cool. And then I'm a fan of the graphic novels too and the comics. And there is a
02:18few special edition comics out there that kind of hint at it. So when I pitched it to
02:22the studio and said where we can go with it, they were excited about it. Just took like
02:25two years for us to finally get all the yeses that we need to move forward on it.