We Got This Covered: Not like The Expendables, but there’s something great about having a whole bunch of films that have the same sort of pace, and having these characters that you’re creating over time. We asked Liam about doing another Taken and he was sort of like “I think we’ve done that enough, we’re done,” but at the same time there’s a line in the film, “If you die, you have sons that will still come after me.” So you sort of leave the door open there…
Olivier Megaton: [Laughs] Yeah, but any movie has an open door. In any movie you can find some thing, anything. Alien was the best example. When Ridley Scott made Prometheus, he opened the door too, so, the thing is you open the door more for the audience than to create something commercial.
It’s very hard to finance a movie today, and when studios or buyers arrive and say “Ok, we would be interested in making a Colombiana 2 or a another Taken,” sure. They think about this, not me, but the producer thinks about this.
On Taken 2 for example, we just opened the door because for me the book is closed at the end of the first one. It told a lot of things. The second one resolved a lot of things, the two are very complimentary. So, to close the book after, you can imagine a third one, a fourth one. We had to open the door for the audience, to let them think after the movie “Ok, what can happen,” because they like to go away with something in their head, in their minds, so they can keep thinking about what could happen after and speaking to other people “Is there going to be a third one? Yeah, in the third one it’s going to be this, this, and this.”
After, for the beginning of creation, I don’t really see the point. I’m not a big fan of action movies, you know. Really, I like thrillers, movies like this, and I like single characters logic in a movie because even, for example, in The Dark Knight there are three big characters, but there is a single character each time, one more representative about the movie.
For example, in The Dark Knight it’s the Joker, because he changes everything. The guy was lovable, hateable, he was everything, but, he led everything into the movie, and suddenly we were into something else. And I don’t think Luc has this side here. We are making French movies, you just have to keep in mind it’s a French production. We are very modest about everything.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Olivier very much for talking with us. Be sure to check out Taken 2, in theaters this Friday.
