With Nacho Vigalondo’s much-anticipated monster flick Colossal approaching its theatrical release, producer and actor Anne Hathaway tells us how they shot the low budget film with clever touches
Can you tell a little bit about your characterIJ
I play Gloria who has been described as a party girl with a heart of gold. She gets drunk when a gigantic monster attacks Seoul. And Jason Sudeikis’ plays my friend, with whom I get drunk without realising that a crisis is staring at us.
What made you take up this roleIJ
To be fair, I didn’t know what I was looking for. And then my great friend Jonathan Demme hosted a screening at Jacob Burns Film Center at Pleasantville, New York. He invited me and my husband to a screening he was doing of Ben Wheatley’s A Fields in England. I was so transported by it, delighted and challenged by it that I wondered if I would ever get a script like that. A couple of weeks later, this one showed up and I loved it. I met Nacho and I loved him. I had seen his short films and believed in him. And then when Jason came on board, it all seemed perfect.
I like that it’s a movie that draws from different genres. And Gloria felt like me in a lot of way. Surrounded by monsters was a new experience.
You already have a solid career in Hollywood. Would you have chosen a project like this in your early careerIJ
It’s not like I’ve been trying to avoid making these movies; you just wait for the ones that really speak to you. I felt ready to take on that responsibility and say “okay”, you know there are movies you do and they are getting made whether or not you’re in them. I was ready to stand up and say, “This is my sense of humour, this is what I believe in, this is a filmmaker I’m backing, this is a script that I think should get made.” I’m really gratified that a lot of people seem to agree with that.
Is it empowering because it’s also your financingIJ
You know I can’t claim artistic purity. I’m very conscious of making moves that will allow me to keep making moves because I want to stay in this, I love this, and I want to be able to do this for the rest of my life. I kind of live very happily in the small-big movie world. I love making movies that I think could have potential to be sleepers. That’s kind of where I feel really, really comfortable. I was confident about this one because the size of the budget meant that we weren’t going to be pulled back into the middle, and Voltage, to their credit, didn’t try and come in and direct the movie. They hired a director they trusted.
Are you looking for more projects like this, for directors you don’t know of from many countriesIJ
I’ve been doing that anyway. This is the first one that bore fruit that I can share.
Did you guys shoot with a green screenIJ
Just a little bit. We shot on a very low budget but there are clever touches. Even though my character turns into a giant lizard monster, she is viewing it on an iPhone! So the technology actually is so much by the size of the budget. We’ll never be able to compete with big FX. But we’re inventive, necessity is the mother of invention. Scrappy little Colossal.
MVP Entertainment’s sci-fi comedy releases this Friday