An Enormous Interview with BenDavid Grabinski, Adrian Askarieh, and Ceren Lee
Steve Barton
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After making it big with live-action web series based on the Halo and Mortal Kombat video game franchises, Machinima has now turned to comic books for new programming.
The online entertainment player paired with director BenDavid Grabinski and producer Adrian Askarieh and has a cool 10-minute pilot based on Enormous, debuting today (March 20) on the Machinima website, which you can see below.
Enormous is set in a post-apocalyptic world after a cataclysmic ecological event unleashes giant monsters that destroy human civilization, putting mankind at the bottom of the food chain (and under their massive feet).
The busy filmmakers took a few minutes out of their busy schedules to chat with us about this “big little” pilot. Askarieh phoned from Berlin, where he is on set shooting the Hitman reboot, Agent 47. “We are in our fourth week, and we just wrapped for the day, so I’m ready to talk about Enormous!” he said.
While Agent 47 is definitely destined for the silver screen, the producer said he didn’t treat his web series pilot any differently than he would a bigger blockbuster. “We tried to do something interesting and unique and with scope in the digital series format. We wanted to treat it as a big budget feature film as far as scale and special effects. Very ambitious. We wanted to transcend the limitations of the format itself. To approach it more like it’s a feature film but on the web; after all, more and more people are watching movies on their tablets and phones.”
When asked whether or not the subject matter was calculated for the zeitgeist, Askarieh replied, “It just happens to land between Pacific Rim and the Godzilla reboot, but that’s not why we made this. We genuinely love big monster movies.”
Ceren Lee, who plays Ellen Grace, the heroine of the story, doesn’t love big monster movies. Nor was she ever a fan of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic horror or disaster films. “That stuff wasn’t really anything I would go and watch,” Lee said. “But when I read the pilot script for Enormous, I was riveted. It was so well written. There’s a life to it and realness to it that I completely related to. And I loved the character of Ellen. I loved all the nuances in the script.”
<>“I haven’t seen the pilot yet, or the monsters, but I feel like I have because during the process BenDavid included me in everything and would send me little bits and pieces asking what I thought. The illustrations of the monster they had were just incredible!”
While the fate of the show is unknown after the pilot runs (that’s all that’s shot so far), if it gets picked up to run as a series, Lee is definitely in. She would love to explore her character and the world of Enormous a lot more.
When we talked to Grabinski, he was quick to clarify an error that’s been propagated all over the web – that he co-wrote the script with Andre Øvredal (Trollhunter). “I did not co-write the script. That’s incorrect information from a press release or something. He has sole credit as writer. I’m the director.”
Asked about the interesting, but jarring and disconcerting beginning to the pilot (I got a preview and at first wondered if I was watching a later episode out of sequence), Grabinski said that was his aim: for the viewer to be thrown into the aftermath of the apocalypse. “It was important to me that we did not have a lot of backstory. We don’t show things going wrong or monsters arriving, and we’re going mid-story into a world you don’t know and characters you haven’t met. If this was a movie, I would be doling out more story. But in a 10-minute pilot we don’t want exposition every 60 seconds.”
As far as the enormous creatures, we don’t actually get a glimpse until the end of the 10 minutes. Why not? “The whole idea to me with the pilot [is] you want to sell people [on the] characters. I always felt it would be 80% people and 20% monsters. If viewers like the characters, and there’s enough human conflict, we can sustain that. In the pilot there’s a drumroll to the arrival of the monster at the finale – and you want everything to have a sense of escalation. So every scene is a little bigger than the one before. So let’s just say the monster you see in the pilot may be a lot smaller than the ones you encounter later!”
The pilot/short film is based on the critically-acclaimed graphic novel of the same name. Written by Tim Daniel and drawn by Mehdi Cheggour, the Enormous novel tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world in which massive insect-like beasts have taken over the world and humans are now the bottom of the food chain.
The creative minds of director BenDavid Grabinski (short film Cost of Living), writer Andre Ovredal (Trollhunter), and producer Adrian Askarieh (Hitman, Agent 47) have taken Enormous from the page to the screen. It stars Ceren Lee, Steven Brand, Billy Miller, Erica Gimpel, Garrett Coffey, Charles Melton, Dallas Liu, Joe Swanberg, Simon Barrett, Todd Farmer, and Nathan Moore.
In addition, you can click here to pre-order Enormous Issue #1 from the new ongoing monthly comic book series. Featuring an exclusive poster art cover from artist Mehdi Cheggour (see that below the video), the variant Issue #1 is available exclusively from Hastings Entertainment. The release date is June 25, 2014.
Enormous Short Film Synopsis:
The film picks up years after E Day, the worldwide attack of massive insect-like beasts, as the remaining humans from all walks of life must band together to survive and fight back against the monstrous invaders. Viewers are introduced to Ellen (Ceren Lee), a mother who has lost her child, and watch as she prepares to play a major role in the human resistance.
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