On a particularly bright and sunny day down in Anaheim a wide range of Hollywood talent walked along the red carpet for Disney’s upcoming movie “The Lone Ranger.” There was a crazy mixture of pre-teen Disney Channel stars, actors from the film and other talent from the industry that just want to go ahead and watch a new movie.
Out of those actors was Sharlto Copley, most noted for his great work in Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 sci-fi film “District 9.” Years later and he’s on the verge of taking over the second half of the year with performances in “Elysium,” a movie that brings Copley together again with filmmaker Neill Blomkamp and “Oldboy,” the buzzed about remake handled by Spike Lee. The cool and enthusiastic Copley stopped on by to talk with us about what we should expect from the upcoming movies and how incredibly excited he is for the rest of the world to see what he’s been up to as of recent.
First he talked about the difference between this version of “Oldboy” and the South Korean film:
“I felt like with The A-Team I wanted to do Murdock very similarly to the way that Dwight Schultz did it. With Oldboy it felt like there was room to do something really different with the villain character, because I’m the villain in Oldboy. I did something very, very different from what the original role would have been. In terms of a story, there’s a lot of similar elements, but like Spike [Lee] says, it’s not really a remake of the movie. It’s more going back to the graphic novel and doing a version of that. It’s a retelling based more on the original work.”
Then he proceeded to say a few words about “Eylsium”:
“I’m enjoying the fact that they gave a lot away in the trailer but they gave very little away with my character, because I don’t like it when they cut a trailer that gives the whole movie away. Neill and I were saying that. There’s a very big surprise in Elysium which, I’m still trying to decide whether or not to tell my mother about it or maybe I should just let her watch it and try to explain it to her afterwards. That is as much as I can tell you.”
You can see “Elysium” in theaters this August 8th and “Oldboy” following shortly after on October 25th.