10 Things We Discovered About Ridley Scott’s Reshoots On All The Money In The World

The Fastest Pair Of Hands In Hollywood?

♦ Over on vulture.com, they just chatted to legendary director Ridley Scott, whose film All The Money In The World had to be reshot when Kevin Spacey had to be replaced by Christopher Plummer. Here’s 10 things we found out…

1. Because he does board his own work, this helps to make it easier to do things like reshoots: “You plan, you know exactly what it will look like, and I think it helps me enormously that I still do something as basic as storyboard my own stuff. It forces me, on paper, to make decisions. My boards are now insured for $6 million! I literally draw “wide shot,” “medium cross,” “long shot,” in detail. I’ll get a great frame, snap my fingers, and move on to the next one. You’re filming on paper before you even begin, so when I walk on set, I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

2. At no point did he choose to show Plummer what Spacey had shot for very specific reasons: “You have to protect the new actor. I would never show Christopher what Kevin did. I want him to be his own man. He is his own man in this one, and a lot of that comes from the inherent nature of Christopher, who is essentially very charming, has that twinkle, has that smile, and when he’s playing with those words, is a motherfucker. He can give it a bit more depth. Kevin — who, without question, did a great job — was colder.”

3. In fact, he used the reshoots as an excuse to sneak things into the film that weren’t in it before: “I always felt there was an implied relationship between Gail and Chase. When you spend that much time together and you’re roughly the same age, and Chase was a very presentable kind of guy, and Gail was a very presentable kind of woman … they’re two people going into battle, and the implication that something could evolve is there. I told [Michelle],’So, when you come out and he’s at the flat, kick your shoes off and get a beer. Walk past him in stocking feet. Immediately, that is sexy. Take the earrings off and talk about your son.'”

4. The reshoots on the film were fairly significant in terms of how many days they lasted, Scott revealed: “Nine days. Should have been 23 or 24. My crew is fantastic.”

5. Ridley Scott is known as a fast director and he can work quicker than most other directors working in Hollywood: “They shouldn’t [take that long], that’s why I do two a year. We did Alien: Covenant, which is a very complicated film, in 73 days. That would normally be 130 days. What the fuck are you doing, you know?”

6. All The Money In The World had sat around before Scott came to it:”This came to me off the shelf. They hadn’t managed to get things going. Same with American Gangster, that had been on the shelf for four years. So Steve Zaillian called me, he’s a friend, and said, “Just tell me I’m not fuckin’ crazy, can you read this script I think is good?” And I read it and went, “Damn!” — so I made it.”

7. The director really likes the idea of Netflix and we may see something he has created on there at some point: “I love the advent of Netflix and what it means to people like me. It suits me down to the ground. I’d love to do a ten-hour mini-series myself, personally. [David] Fincher’s got the best show on the air right now. Mindhunter.”

8. Scott is quite honest about Blade Runner 2049, which he produced but didn’t direct:”I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say. It was fucking way too long. Fuck me! And most of that script’s mine.”

9. Scott sees the idea for the second film as distinctly different from the original (warning: spoilers ahead if anyone hasn’t seen Blade Runner 2049): “But the big idea comes from Blade Runner. Tyrell is a trillionaire, maybe 5 to 10 percent of his business is AI. Like God, he has created perfect beings that, for all intents and purposes, there is no telling the difference from humans…The second film is, what happens to the baby? You’ve got to have the baby, you can’t have the mother, so the mother has to inexplicably die four months after she breastfeeds.”

10. The director doesn’t think that they would ever offer him a Star Wars movie because of the way he works:”No, no. I’m too dangerous for that…Because I know what I’m doing. [Laughs.] I think they like to be in control, and I like to be in control myself. When you get a guy who’s done a low-budget movie and you suddenly give him $180 million, it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s fuckin’ stupid.”

To read the entire chat go to Vulture Vulture Ridley Scott All The Money In The World Reshoots