Though everyone expected the Comic-Con crowd to go crazy when people like Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro took the Hall H stage for panel presentations last week, the person who actually got some of the loudest applause was Pacific Rim actor Charlie Day. Yes, there are a large number of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans at the Con, but Day is also insanely funny and an all-around awesome guy; it’s not hard to see why he’s so well liked. He shined as one of the leads in one of last year’s best comedies, Horrible Bosses, and last week at Comic-Con Steve got the chance to speak with the actor for a bit.During their brief conversation, Day talked about del Toro’s atypical approach to CGI in Pacific Rim and gave an update on the upcoming Horrible Bosses sequel. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.
When del Toro finally committed to making Pacific Rim, he promised “the biggest fucking monsters†we’ve ever seen. For those unaware, the film takes place in a future where Earth is tormented by a number of giant creatures called Kaiju. The nations of Earth have banded together to create equally massive human-manned robots called Jaegers in order to battle and defeat the Kaiju.Del Toro is known for being a big proponent of practical effects and prosthetic makeup, but in order to tackle the epic size and scope of Pacific Rim he’s having to utilize a heavy dose of CGI. Steve asked Day about the film, and the actor recounted del Toro’s practical-heavy approach to filming CGI scenes:
“He’s found a different way to shoot CGI. Every set I walked into was built to a T, to the nines. I saw almost no actual green screen; I would be running from a monster and cars would be flipping over behind me—real cars—over my head like, ‘Oh that almost killed me,’ and I knew that at some point they were gonna paint a monster in there but it’s very real for me in this moment. So it was awesome and I think it’s gonna be a really great movie."
We saw some footage from the film at Comic-Con (you can read our recap right here), and though we didn’t see much, what we saw of some of the monsters vs. robots fights looked positively epic.
Additionally, with Horrible Bosses doing incredibly well at the box office last year, New Line was quick to start working on a follow-up. We learned in February that original writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein had been hired to script the sequel, with director Seth Gordon and stars Day, Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis all expected to return. Steve asked Day about the status of Horrible Bosses 2, and the actor seemed optimistic:
“Well I think I’m just waiting for a phone call. I know they have a script, and I’m being told they’re gonna call me any day and say, ‘Hey we want you to read this and we wanna offer it to you.’ I’ve talked with Bateman and I haven’t talked to Sudeikis yet but ideally we can do it, ‘cause I love those guys and Seth Gordon was great and Jaime Foxx was great, so if we can all come back and do it that’d be fantastic.â€
Horrible Bosses was undoubtedly one of the best comedies of 2011, so hopefully everything can come together fairly soon and we can see Day, Bateman, and Sudeikis reunite for more R-rated craziness. Â You can watch Steve's video interview with Day below, and click here to catch up on all of our Comic-Con 2012 coverage.