When I spoke with Joe Carnahan on the phone last year, we spoke briefly about The Grey, just days before he left out for his grueling shoot. As you might imagine, his biggest concern about the sub-arctic shoot was going to be the cold, cold, cold- a dangerous element perfectly captured by this first still from The Grey. Scanned from Entertainment Weekly by Dread Central, the still is a simple but effective promise of the fangless, but equally dangerous of the two major problems Liam Neeson and his oil-drilling crew will face as they try to survive in wolf-territory after a plane crash.
Don’t count out the critters though, as they’ll be front and center. DC recalls Carnahan’s explanation of how the wolves operate…
“The wolves have a territorial range of 300 miles, and they will run you out if you cross that. If you’re within 30 miles of their den as is the case here, they will try to kill you. It’s simple arithmetic, but it creates an opportunity for one of those man vs. nature movies I love like Deliverance and Touching the Void.”
…and considering who is designing the wolves, you can expect them to be intense-enough to make even the most cold-natured viewer forget about the weather (even if the film crew won’t be so easily distracted)…
“Greg Nicotero, who did all of the effects on The Walking Dead is building me all of my animatronic wolves, and I’m very excited. I’m not seeing them until tomorrow, the kind of finished alpha-wolf- I’m pretty pumped up. That’s gonna be, I think the biggest challenge of that is just going to be elements, man. It’s just so cold, and we don’t have a lot of time to shoot it, we have about 40 days, which is what I had on Smokin’ Aces so this is gonna be- we’re gonna be crankin’.”
The Grey will be looking for a distributor once the film is complete, so there’s no release date yet. As you read, it’s a quick shoot though, so we shouldn’t be waiting too long before we hear more.
DISCUSS THIS on the CHUD Message Board
&
Like / Share it on Facebook (above or below) if you think it’s great!