Considered to be one of the top screenwriters in Hollywood–despite doing most of his writing in New York City–David Koepp has written some of the biggest blockbusters of the past two decades, little movies like Jurassic Park and its sequel, the first Mission: Impossible, the first Spider-Man, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In between those gigs, he’s found the time to direct a number of smaller movies including the supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes, Secret Window starring Johnny Depp, and 2008’s Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais.
His latest is Premium Rush (opening Friday, August 24), a New York-based action-thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Wilee, a renegade bike messenger who has been having girlfriend problems when he’s assigned to deliver an urgent letter all the way downtown. Unfortunately, a police detective named Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon) also wants to get his hands on the envelope sending Wilee on a race across the city to get it to its destination.
ComingSoon.net sat down with Koepp and his writing partner John Kamp (seated to his right) to talk about the movie. In the video interview below, we discuss:
* Why it’s taken him so long to direct an action movie after writing so many others
* How they were inspired by the stunts of Danny MacAskill
* How the original idea for the movie may have shown up in Spider-Man 3
* How he really shot the movie on the streets of New York
* Some of the other obstacles faced while shooting the bicycle scenes
* Why they decided on getting Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play Wilee
* How they developed the character of Bobby Monday with Michael Shannon
Plus you can watch the portion of the interview where we talk about the Untitled Jack Ryan Project, the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel and whether he’ll be involved with the planned Jurassic Park 4, which we already posted here.
