Arriving on May 13 is director Scott Stewart’s Priest.  Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the film stars Paul Bettany as a renegade warrior priest who goes on the hunt for his niece who’s been kidnapped by vampires. The 3D film also stars Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Karl Urban, and Lily Collins. At WonderCon, Screen Gems premiered a few scenes and I thought it looked like a pretty cool vampire movie.  In addition, while the film has been post converted, the 3D looked really well done and it just shows when you spend the time, post conversion works.  It took them 6 months to do it.The day after the panel, I sat down with Stewart for an extended interview.  We discussed the footage he brought to WonderCon, did his previous experience in visual effects help him on Priest, the release date shift and how that helped the film, and he discussed his next project: Mortal Instruments (which is set to star Lily Collins).  While Priest was post converted, Stewart tells me he's shooting Instruments in 3D and "we’re in the midst of doing a bunch of designs for the vehicles, the weapons, the creatures and the world."  Hit the jump to watch.Finally, if you missed my video interview with Paul Bettany or Lily Collins, just click the links.  And here's Adam's recap of the footage from Friday night.priest_poster_set_02_maggie_qScott Stewart

  • :07 Talks about showing finished footage in 3D for the first time to an audience. Showed a sizzle reel and a full scene.
  • :53 How did his previous experience in visual effects affect or augment his work on Priest? Very helpful in the pre-vis phase of the film. Helped when directing actors interacting with CGI characters that weren’t onset. Talks about their approach to filming when taking into account CGI vampires.
  • 4:15 Talks about the release date shifts for the film. How he convinced the studio to give him at least 6 months to post-convert the film to 3D.
  • 6:39 Talks about being attached to direct Mortal Instruments. “We’re hoping to get ready to shoot late-summer early-fall. [We’re] working on the script right now and casting. We have Lily Collins attached to play Claire Fray, which we’re really excited about. We’re in the midst of doing a bunch of designs for the vehicles and the weapons and the creatures and the world, and we’re trying to figure out exactly where we’re gonna shoot and all the good fun stuff.
  • 7:19 How does Mortal Instruments compare to Priest with regards to scale? Is it bigger?

“It’s actually a little bigger, but it’s a very different kind of movie. I mean it’s a “set in New York” movie it’s not a “takes place in an entirely new world.” You know Priest is an entirely alternate world, and everything in the movie is designed. New York is a big character in the movie, I grew up loving those “New York at night” movies like After Hours, where the sun goes down and strange things happen and adventure is there, so that’s an influence. Movies like The Lost Boys is an influence, that sort of sun goes down movie. And there’s a kind of sexuality and sensuality and excitement. And so that’s something that we really wanna try to make a part of it, it’s kind of a very different thing stylistically. It’s also a really music influenced movie, and so that’s something that’s gonna be really fun, a chance to integrate a lot of contemporary music into the movie.”

  • 3D or not 3D?  “We’re actually shooting in 3D.”

-