PD: I imagine Gigantor didn't really work out how you had hoped. Did you learn anything from the experience of your first LRF release?
JC: Yeah, even I considered Gigantor to be more about dipping my feet in the water. I think what happened there was trying to be too faithful to the source material. In Gigantor’s case, it felt like it wanted to be as big as Transformers, but it also kept a few cheesy things like the names of the characters and the plot. I don’t agree fully that you shouldn’t adapt animé, you just have to be really careful with how you adapt it. Case in point the ridiculous Dragonball and Last Airbender. I can’t promise that I’ve completely learned my lesson from it, I can only shoot my arrows and hope they land closer to the bullseye next time.
PD: Role-playing video games can sometimes be tricky to adapt for film. How did your adaptation process on EarthBound go?
JC: For Earthbound, I feel like a lot of the story was there, it was just figuring out what to leave in and what could be taken out, you’re gonna have to trim a 30+ hour game down to 2-3 hours, so a lot of stuff from the game is going to be left on the cutting room floor and you just have to piece together what you can afford to throw away to still make movie goer and fan of the games say “that’s the game I grew up playing!” The characters to me felt like the kind of characters you would see in an 80s/90s adventure film where the kids are the main characters: Neverending Story. The Goonies, Monster Squad or the slice of life films like Sandlot or Stand By Me. Those films don’t seem to come up as often as they used to, but I feel like it will resonate with the audience who both grew up on those movies and/or played Earthbound. And there’s enough in there for new audiences to not feel left out.
PD: With your first film out of the way and your second about to hit theaters, what type of films can audiences expect from you in the future?
JC: You’ll definitely be seeing more adaptations down the pipeline. I used to pitch movies for the defunct Crazy Moon Pictures, I was younger and had a lot more creativity on my plate, but now my mindset is mostly centered on things I have interest in, stuff that I’ll say “well man I’d like to see this as a movie!” you’ll see that mindset come into play with the next couple of films I pitched. That’s not to say I’ll never have an original movie to pitch, but if it crosses my mind and I can make a story out of it, I will! Admittedly you’ll get a lot of adaptations of intellectual properties, but maybe there could be a time I can work in something original again once the inspiration strikes. I enjoy all kinds of movies, so I’d like to put together a buffet of all types of them in the future.
PD: You're still pretty new to the studio, but do you have any favorite LRF films?
JC: Being so new to the studio, I haven’t seen a lot of the older releases, but thanks to the database, I can certainly check out the catalogs a lot easier. I can definitely say I enjoyed many of the films from the last season: Rodeo, The Void, Ziggy Stardust, Knieval to name a few. I’m also usually on board with video game and comic book adaptations like Wonder Woman, Black Cat, Supergirl and Twisted Metal. I am a little bummed out that a couple of my favorite superheroes have received the Last Resort studio treatments(Green Arrow and Jon Stewart’s Green Lantern) but I am pleased to see them get made and I probably wouldn’t have done them as much Justice as they already received
JC:
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