Out of all the movies I saw in 2007, one of the best was a small documentary called âThe King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.â The movie is about an out of work teacher named Steve Wiebe as he tries to set the world record in the arcade game Donkey Kong. What he ends up having to go through to try and accomplish this goal is something you have to see, and after you do, I think youâll agree that as good as Javier Bardem was in âNo Country For Old Men,â the screen villain of the year was Billy Mitchell in âKing of Kong.â The main reason⦠Billy is real. Since I want to get to the interview, if you want to know more about the movie or see some clips from the film, just click here.
Anyway, while a lot of you might know about the movie and the story of Billy vs. Steve, you may not know that New Line Cinema is going to try and remake it as a Hollywood movie and theyâve gotten Seth Gordon â the documentary director â to helm the remake. Also, along for the ride is Ed Cunningham, the producer of the documentary.
So at last nightâs DVD release party at the Westwood Arcade in Los Angeles, they had Steve Wiebe there to show us some secrets on Donkey Kong and they also had Ed Cunningham.
After the brief Q&A was over, I managed to talk with Ed about the remake as I wanted to know the status of the project and if they had discussed casting yet. As you can read in the transcript below, he said that New Line is completely onboard with this project and itâs a priority film for the studio once the strike is over. He also said they have a screenwriter attached and that his dream casting for Steve would be Greg Kinnearâ¦who I think would be an amazing choice.
Since the project is still being figured out and put together, this could easily be a movie that never gets made. He talked about how theyâre struggling to try and figure out the end of the movieâ¦like will they battle head to head, or would it be something else.
Since I think the documentary is so special, Iâm of the opinion that unless they can 100% figure out how this remake should workâ¦they should leave it alone. However, I do think it has the makings of a great film and would welcome a movie if they get it right. I just hope they donât screw up something so great.
So if youâre curious whatâs upâ¦hereâs Ed. As always, you can either read the transcript or download the audio as an MP3 by clicking here. And you should know this was recorded in an arcadeâ¦.hence the background noise.
Collider: Once the writersâ strike is resolved..Ed Cunningham: Yeah, once itâs resolvedâ¦weâve hired a writer, Michael Bicall is his name, and once itâs resolved and he can get back to workâ¦itâs all based on how soon we get a good script. You know, luckily everyone who is involved in it â from New Line to the producerâs side â we all know the story really well, we all care about it deeply, we all care about protecting the documentary and the integrity of the documentary, and so does Michael Bacall the writer. He gets it, thatâs why he was hired. He knows kind of what we are after. But once the strike is overâ¦Richard Brenner, who is the President at New Line, is ready to run with it. Collider: So do you have any dream casting for any of the roles?Ed Cunningham: You know itâs funny, weâve been all over the board. One of the things that really endeared us to New Line is and Richard Brenner in particular wasâ¦itâs very easy to say, âoh, big comedy have people kicking each other in the nuts.â But thatâs not his vision at all and itâs not ours. We donât want this thing spoofed, you know. South Park already did it and thatâs okay, but we donât want to make a spoof of this. And so the idea is that it will be dramatic actors â guys who have range, guys that can figure it out. Weâve thrown around names but nothing that has stuck. Collider: So is Steve going to approve who plays Steve? How does that work?Ed Cunningham: You mean working with the actor?Collider: I guess what Iâm saying isâ¦will the movie be the exact story? You see where Iâm going with this?Ed Cunningham: As we discussed in the Q&A, there were things that happened in the documentary that obviously weâll shoot like youâre there⦠like his kid crapping his pants while heâs playing the game. Weâll be in the garage with him instead of seeing the video from his world record attempt. Things like that. But, thereâs the million dollar question⦠what about the ending? Do they go head to head? You just donât know. Weâd like to be very faithful to the documentary. I know I would, and I feel like everyone else in the room feels that way to. But, at the same time, you donât want to remake it exactly. Because you want to give something a little different. You want to see if you can maybe expand the characters a little bit, spend some more time in their personal lives, see that kind of stuff. I hope we stay pretty true to it. Collider: Iâm going to put you on the spot. Dream casting for some of these people. What is your dream?Ed Cunningham: Thatâs a hard one.Collider: There has to be one person for Billyâ¦Ed Cunningham: Just so you knowâ¦this is dangerous territory. Collider: Well, dream doesnât mean anything cause once they read a script people can back out, you know what I mean.Ed Cunningham: If it were just Ed casting the movie, I love Greg Kinnear. I think heâs an amazing actor.Collider: I could really see that. Thatâs very good. Ed Cunningham: Then for Billyâ¦thereâs justâ¦Collider: There was a lot of talk online about who could play Billy. Everyone from Johnny Depp to you name it. Ed Cunningham: Tom Cruise. There have been a lot of names.Collider: Have any actors tried or contacted you about the film?Ed Cunningham: Yeah, but weâre not talking about that. (he laughs) One of the things that happened with this film was that when we sent the film around to the agencies to get represented â you know cause a film needs an agent like an actor â this little underground thing happened with all the assistants in Hollywood, they had heard about this film and they started having (someone interrupts him) and so through that a bunch of big name writers, directors and actors have seen the film, love the film and perfect exampleâ¦one of the reasons that Seth Gordon is shooting Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn right now is King of Kong. And Iâm blanking on the name of the guy editing Four Christmasesâ¦but both him and Vince saw the movie and they were like âthat guy could direct this,â so itâs been a pretty cool process. Steve actually got an email out of the blue from Tony Hawk. He found his email, then sent him an email and told him youâre awesome and sent him a couple of skateboards and some games for his kids. We were at Comic-Con having dinner after the screening and Jonah Hill who had a tiny film coming out called Superbad, was doing press next door and heard Weibe was next door, left the press to come over and have his picture taken with Steve Weibe. Itâs just been really cool to see people really wanting to hang with Steve.Collider: And whatâs it like to have the best ranked film at Rotten Tomatoes?Ed Cunningham: I think weâre number two now. I think Ratatouille is now number 1.Collider: I have to be honest, I think Ratatouille is amazing.Ed Cunningham: Itâs awesome. We actually got to take Kong to Pixar and play it there.