Director D.J. Caruso On Set Interview I AM NUMBER FOUR

As we mentioned in our previous post, Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub from Collider.com had the unique opportunity to visit the set of Dreamworks, I Am Number Four this past July.  During that time he was able to sit down and talk with the playmakers that are bringing this book to the big screen. 

One of the interviews he was able to conduct was with Director D.J. Caruso.  'Frosy' was able to talk to him about he got involved with the project as well as some wonderful insight into the book and film, and how the film differs from the book. 

Here are some brief excerpts:

How did you get involved with this? Obviously, you had the association with DreamWorks before. Did you get the manuscript back when they were first optioning it?

DJ Caruso: What happened was that I remember reading that they had bought this manuscript for Michael Bay and just thought, “Oh, that sounds like a really good idea,” and then when “Transformers 3” was definitely going to happen, Steven (Spielberg) called me and said, “Would you read this? We really want to make this movie and Michael can’t, Michael doesn’t have enough time,” and I read the manuscript for the book and liked the concept, read the screenplay and thought it needs some work but dove into it and started working on it for about five or six months and got it into good shape and started making the movie. I love DreamWorks. For me, there’s no other place where I’d rather work.

He goes on to talk about how the movie will be set up differently than the book:

So this is mostly a set-up for these characters, do we get a lot of their history?

DJ Caruso: You know what? This is interesting. In the book, you’ll get a lot more of the history of Lorien and where he came from. In the screenplay, we deal with it on kind of a level where there’s a lot of mystery, so I think God willing Movie 2 is going to be the second half of this book in a weird way, because there’s a lot more of the history of where he came from and how he got there. I was more interested in him trying to figure out who he was. Who he wants to be and who he ultimately is are two different people and I think that was sort of the dramatic conflict that I liked. This is a kid who really thinks he wants to stay in a small town and fall in love with this girl but at the same time, his destiny and what he’s supposed to do are not going to allow him to do that.

This is a very lengthy and intriguing interview, so please check out the rest of it here.

Source: Collider