Interview: Jacob Jones

 

In this edition of Interview, Last Resort Films president Phil Dolan sits down for an interview with Jacob Jones (Khumba the Flying Zebra, The Oil Slick) to discuss his latest film (E.P.), recent animation success and his future plans....



PD: Khumba he Flying Zebra became the biggest hit of your career earlier this season. How does that feel?

JJ: It feels amazing. I’m sure most of you know by now, I haven’t always had the best record with the box office, so to have Khumba be the highest grossing film right now [Editor's Note: This interview was conducted before the release of The Flash #2 or Birds of Prey, so Khumba the Flying Zebra was still the highest grossing film of the season at that time], it’s an absolute honor. Hopefully I can continue the success going forward!

PD: You're going from the feel-good animated adventure of Khumba the Flying Zebra to an expensive "ripped from the headlines" drama with the release of E.P. What are your hopes and/or expectations for the film?

JJ: It’s certainly a shift in tone, that’s for sure. I’ve been going on about how this movie is going to be one of my best works. If you know how The Youngest Hart and to a lesser extent Gathering of the Wolves turned out, you’ll know that whenever I hype up a film to be amazing, it doesn’t go the way I expect it to. I’m hopeful EP can buck the trend, especially since we have an amazing cast working in this film.

I do need to bring this up, I accidentally forgot that I had was a shorter version of the film, so the E.P. you’re actually getting is a few hundred words longer than that version. Hopefully this won’t play a factor against the movie, but it wouldn’t surprise if it did. It’s an incredibly long film, probably the hardest trimming job Ive ever done.

PD: Recently you've been flooding the studio with a large amount of new scripts at a faster pace than usual. What has inspired the recent uptick in submissions from you?

JJ: Well, you actually have Adam Sandler to thank. I got the idea to write a movie about a manchild who gets the bright idea of being a leader of a country from his own backyard and put Sandler in that role. As I wrote the movie, I felt something I hadn’t felt since Super Grover. Sheer morbid curiosity and absolute fun. The movie in question is called D.I.C.K and I had the best time working on it. That got me thinking. There’s a lot of ideas I have that still haven’t been written yet, so I decided to embark on an eight season plan. For the next couple of weeks, maybe months, I’m going to be introducing new ideas. Ideas that can fill the next eight seasons of the studio and maybe beyond. It’s already provided some great films in Madeline, Mimsley and Me, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and my golden child, Victims. I’m hoping to reveal more films in the coming weeks.

PD: You've written a lot of different types and styles of films at this point, but is there a type of film you would like to tackle that you haven't already?

JJ: Of all the films I’ve made, the one film I’ve yet to do is a horror film, mainly because I’ve never been into the genre. There are other genres I haven’t touched on yet, most notably erotic/thriller and westerns, but you’ll be seeing two films on that in the next few seasons. Tara’s Web in Season 26 and Idlewood Ranch in Season 27, though that is subject to change.