At the film's press day, Joel Silver talked about finding Rain and developing this film around him, and also gave glimpses into what people can expect from Sherlock Holmes in December, and the future releases of The Losers, Unknown White Male and The Factory.

Q: You first worked with Rain on Speed Racer. How did you meet him?

Joel: I had actually been in Tokyo on another movie, and I was in the hotel and I heard this huge commotion in an elevator. I said, "Who's here?," and they said, "That's Rain," and I said, "Who's that?" I had no clue who he was. I met him and I realized that he was this incredibly popular pop artist and singer. When we were making Speed Racer, we were looking for artists all over the world to be a part of it, and the Warners guys said to me, "You really ought to see if Rain will do this." So, he came into Germany and he met the Warchowski brothers, and they decided to put him in the movie.

At the same time, I had been talking to an executive at Warner Bros., when I made my deal. Dark Castle is a self-funded entity. We have money to make our own movies and distribute them through Warner Bros. One executive said to me, "Do you think that you could find a martial arts star? It might be nice to find that. We've done historically great business at Warner Bros. with martial arts stars, back to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, and movies with Steven Segal and Jet Li. Maybe you could find that." So, I told the Warchowski brothers that it would be nice if we could find that one day, and when they saw Rain do his first training on the movie, they said, "We've got him. This is the guy." So, we actually built this movie for and around him, and he delivered.

Q: What did you see in Rain that made you know he could do this?

Joel: It was when he started training and they said what he could do. I was already looking to find a guy to do a movie like this, so when they said, "This is the guy," it just made perfect sense. We crafted this movie around him. Who can say what a new martial arts star is. What is that going to be? I think that Rain could be that.

Q: Being a huge pop star, did Rain have any diva element to him at all?

Joel: You wouldn't even know that that was in his life. He is so committed, so focused and he worked so hard. There are some movies made today, like 300, where there are a lot of guys with a lot of abs, and maybe all those were not all there originally, but were helped with CGI, as they've said. But, this guy looks like that. That's him, in all those shots. He had zero body fat. He was just completely focused and there. He is a great guy. He's a sweet, smart, very talented and athletic guy.

Q: From a producing standpoint, are there any special considerations for a production of such international scope?

Joel: We developed it at Dark Castle to make it and it got a little big for us, so we had to join forces with both Warner Bros. and Legendary. It was intended to be what it is. It is a big international martial arts film with an international cast, which we hope will get an international audience.

Q: This is a big action film, but it also has heart. Did you want to make sure that the backstory worked?

Joel: The intention was to make the movie work and to make it an effective story. It's a fun movie and, in the opening scene, you know what you're going to see. It's meant to have you have a good time. It's designed as that type of picture. The most important thing was, "Can Rain pull it off?," and I think he did.

Q: Did you ever have discussions about the level of violence?

Joel: When we started The Matrix and we did all the kung fu stuff in there, we crafted a new look for those kind of Eastern movies with a Western aesthetic. The guys who did our martial arts work on this movie worked with all the big masters and they did it themselves this time. They brought a crew in from all over the world to be the ninjas, with all different martial arts techniques and styles. It was meant to be grounded. It doesn't have the fantasy and wire work that we've had before. It was a grounded, hard-action, ninja movie.

Q: Whose idea was it to open this film on Thanksgiving?

Joel: The studio felt it was a good time. Clearly, this movie New Moon didn't work so well, so nobody really cared about that. I'm kidding. But, the idea was that it was a good time of year to have a movie like this. There are no young male movies right now. We do tracking and research on what people want to see and, right now, this is the movie that young boys want to see.

Q: But, you're going to get girls too, don't you think?

Joel: I think so. I hope so. I hope that will happen.

Q: Do you see potential for a sequel with this?

Joel: We made a deal with Rain to do another movie. I hope we get to do it, whether it's a sequel or something else. If the audience responds and he has an audience there, then we should definitely make more films with him. I think he could be a big star.

Q: Were you concerned about the tone of this film and making it more serious?

Joel: We wanted to make it that kind of action movie. There are a couple moments of levity in it, but the idea of the movie was to do a ninja film, and commit to the idea of making a ninja film. There are no turtles in this. The last big ninja movie was a turtle movie (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but I think that this movie is what it was meant to be.

Q: Was it difficult to oversee a film with people who didn't all speak English?

Joel: We shot the movie in Berlin and most of the crew was a German crew, but they spoke English. And, we brought in some people from the U.K. We found a lot of these kids in Europe and we brought them together. It was intended to be an international picture, so we knew we were going to do that. I remember, a few years ago, when I made that movie Fred Claus, all of the elves were Russian because they had made a deal with some Russian circus, and we got through that. It was okay. We got through this one, too.

Q: Were there any big challenges with this then, or did it just all go really smoothly?

Joel: It went pretty smoothly. We knew what we were doing. We know how to make this kind of movie, and we just launched into it, pretty much right after Speed Racer came out and didn't happen. It was a good time for us to focus on making this picture, and it just came out great.

Q: What made you choose James McTeigue as the director?

Joel: James had worked with us, for many years, as the First A.D. on all the Matrix films. When we finished the sequels, we needed somebody to come in and do a bunch of television advertisements for our promotional partners. The agencies all wanted Larry and Andy Wachowski to do it, but they really couldn't because they were in the middle of finishing the movies, so we went to James and said, "How do you feel about directing some commercials for us?" He said, "Okay," and he did a fantastic job. All the people he worked with loved him. Then, we segue-wayed from that into V for Vendetta, and he did a great job there. And then, he did all the Second Unit action work on Speed Racer. And then, he did this. So, he's off and running now.

Q: Are you excited about Sherlock Holmes coming out in December?

Joel: Very excited. It's a great film. It's really a sensational movie. It's fantastic. People are going to start seeing it really soon, and I think there's going to be a great response to it.

Q: Are you hoping to make that into a franchise?

Joel: I would hope that it could be a franchise, sure. [Robert] Downey already has another franchise that he's doing pretty well in, but Sherlock is a very different character than Tony Stark, and I think you get a chance to see him do something that is very different from what he does in the Iron Man pictures. He's so good in it. He's so good at everything he does, but he's fantastic as Sherlock, and I think the audience will buy him as this guy. I think it's a chance to make a really big movie.

Q: When you were a kid, were you into the big action movies?

Joel: Sure. When I came to Hollywood, the summers weren't full of action films like they are now. It wasn't really like that. Except for the Bond films and the occasional Dirty Harry movie, there weren't a lot of action films being made. The first movie that I worked on that I was really proud of was a movie called The Warriors. We did that in ‘78. And then, I did 48 Hours in ‘82. Gradually, those became the prevalent movies that people wanted to see, and then that morphed into the comic book movies, which is where we are today. I always wanted to make these kinds of movies, and I really am happy to be able to do that, but I also like thrillers and horror films. I'm just trying to mix it up a bit.

Q: What is The Loserss?

Joel: It was a legendary comic book from the ‘90s that DC put out. It's about a military team of a bunch of guys who get set up by their management and they end up having to go after them. It's a great cast. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is in it with Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Columbus Short and Jason Patric. It's directed by Sylvain White, who did Stomp the Yard. He did a great job. He's a great fella. It comes out in April 2010. It's going to be a really good movie.

Q: What is Unknown White Male?

Joel: That's a thriller that I'm doing with Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and January Jones. That starts shooting in January 2010 in Berlin, and it's really interesting. It's directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who did Orphan for us. It's a pretty exciting picture.

Q: What is The Factory?

Joel: The Factory is going to come out next January 2011. It's a creepy thriller. It's pretty hard-edged stuff. It's fun. John Cusack is in that.

Q: Do you ever get overwhelmed, juggling so many projects?

Joel: The only difference now is that, when I used to do this years ago, people didn't know about all the movies. Because of the Internet, everyone knows what I'm doing. The next one coming out is Sherlock. And then, I have The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington, that comes out in January 2010. But, now that everything is out there, people can sit and discuss all the things that I have in development.

NINJA ASSASSIN opens on November 25th

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