Visionary director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) and producers Gianni Nunnari (300), Mark Canton (300) and Ryan Kavanaugh (The Fighter) unleash an epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny in ‘Immortals,’ a stylish and spectacular 3-D adventure. As a power-mad king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful. The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king’s mission. As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion’s raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man’s future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity. ‘Immortals’ is set for release November 11th 2011.

What was it about ‘Immortals’ and Tarsem Singh that interested you?

Mickey Rourke: The main reason I took the movie was to work with Tarsem. I saw his commercial reel and I saw the interesting Nike reel he did where he had the faces on all the athletes, the masks. He brought some drawings of the different characters as well. I thought this guy is very prepared, you know? And I like working with guys who do a very long pre-production because they know exactly what they want. And because he comes out of commercials, he has such a fabulous look, the way he lights everything. He can take this material to another level. I don’t necessarily know if I would have done this movie if it wasn’t Tarsem involved.

What’s nice about Tarsem is to hear about someone who’s so technical, and then when I get on the floor, before I go over to cut somebody’s head off, Tarsem would say, “Well, could you step over there and pick up that flower petal, or could you stop there and rub that apple before you cut his head off.” He’d give little adjustments to choices I made, and it would become better because of these little tweaks he gave me. That’s what acting is all about, it’s a collaborative effort to find the most interesting choices and make it entertaining. Also not so it’s just, “That’s the evil guy, that’s the good guy.”

How was that, finding the reasoning for Hyperion’s actions?

Mickey Rourke: I never look at the guy as that pure evil, I always try to find there’s a reason – maybe it’s Theseus’ problem, you know, why I behave that way (laughs). It’s like territory, it’s like, “This is my territory, I’ve got a reason to do whatever I want in my territory,” or you could say in my house. He considered everything his house.

Once again, working with Tarsem and Henry. Henry’s very young, enthusiastic. He was running around doing push-ups and cartwheels (laughs), I remember when I used to get that excited. It’s nice to work with someone who’s beginning their career, seeing them so gung-ho. Tarsem was excited. I worked a total of 8 days maybe on the movie.

Did you have a favourite scene?

Mickey Rourke: I think my favourite was the Pomegranate scene, I actually spoke in that scene (laughs). This scene had quite a bit of dialogue, and I was trying to read the cue-card through the fog and the smoke, because there was quite a lot to say. But the dialogue was written very well, and also what was going on in the moment, I think what was going on was that I was torturing a poor soul, with the sh*t that was coming out of my mouth (laughs), it was a lot of fun.

What was it like physically preparing for the role?

Mickey Rourke: I had just come out of surgery. I had torn my bicep and I just had bicep surgery – I lost my whole tendon. The operation didn’t work, so I was actually worried about just being able to tie my shoes. It’s one of the reasons I wore a gauntlet at the top of my right arm, I had a big scar.

I’m going to have to have a cadaver tendon put in to fix it. I was arm-wrestling some rugby players at four in the morning. We had been drinking at a pub in London and I lost, but we became good friends. They gave me a magazine about their club, they play with a team called the Huddersfield Bears and we became friends. I was reading the magazine and there was an article about Gareth Thomas, the rugby player who announced that he’s gay. I came back home and was watching ‘Pardon the Interruption’ and they were talking about Gareth. They were saying how brave he was for coming out and announcing it. I got on a plane and I met Gareth and I asked him, “I’m wanna make your life story.” I think I beat the studio out there by about 4 days, and he gave me the rights. We’re going to do this movie now. He announced his retirement and hopefully in March.…I’ve been writing the script for the past year. Hopefully, we’ll do it in March.

Visionary director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) and producers Gianni Nunnari (300), Mark Canton (300) and Ryan Kavanaugh (The Fighter) unleash an epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny in ‘Immortals,’ a stylish and spectacular 3-D adventure. As a power-mad king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful. The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king’s mission. As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion’s raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man’s future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity. ‘Immortals’ is set for release November 11th 2011.

What was the appeal of this role and ‘Immortals’?

Luke Evans: For me it was a big challenge to take on the role of Zeus, especially with Tarsem’s idea of where he wanted Zeus to come from. He didn’t want him to be this traditional Zeus as the older man, the Laurence Olivier, Liam Neeson angle….he wanted him to look young, even though he was old. That presented a lot of challenges for myself, that was basically what drew me to the script, it drew me to the project. Also to work with Tarsem Singh, I respect his work, I’ve followed his films, he has an amazing catalogue of films. To work with someone like Tarsem you know you’re going to have a very unique experience. Tarsem has energy in full measure, and it never really goes below 100%. When you come on set with him, you basically feel that you either have to match it, or go away and have a word with yourself, and come back and match it. You feel that you’re short-changing him otherwise because of the fact he comes with so much passion. He’s developed such a beautiful world that we ended up working on, that you want to just have integrity for what he’s done. It’s a blast working with him, and also he’s a lovely guy. We hung out with him when he wasn’t on set, on his days off. It was great.

Zeus helps mould Theseus….

Luke Evans: Zeus’ objective is to find a leader, he chooses Theseus because he sees something in him. Theseus is not afraid to stand up for who he is and what he believes in. Zeus sort of moulds him into a leader without him even realising, he learns how to fight, he’s a very strong man. In ‘Immortals’ you really get to see how a character develops, Zeus stands back a lot of the time and just allows Theseus to find his own way.

This is a physical role, aesthetically to look the part and also with the fighting. How did you prepare to play Zeus?

Luke Evans: It was intense, it was the most intense physical thing I’ve ever done. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. To be sent to Montreal, to work with experts in training, physical training, personal training, working with stuntmen, then working with Henry Cavill for several weeks – it was immense, it was really an experience that not only changed me physically for life, I’ve never gone back to the physique I had before this film (laughs), it changed my discipline, it changed my education of what diet means, my training…..it was amazing.

Speaking to Henry, he said you guys had a day off once in a while, what was that like?

Luke Evans: Yeah, they used to call it a cheat day, because your body can’t keep going when you’re training that amount and that intensely. So thank god we got these cheat days (laughs), without it I think we would have imploded with fatigue, we wouldn’t have been nice people to be around (laughs). But this cheat day, it was nice, we got to hang out and have fun, relax on the diet. We got to have a good steak and fries, Montreal does some good steaks, real good (laughs)!

Was it hard to find the right balance between playing this God as this powerful being, while also making him relatable?

Luke Evans: I think that Gods could easily be boring, if you just think of them as a God. In the films we’ve seen with the Gods, they’ve always been sitting in thrones with big beards. They don’t do anything, they talk about stuff,  they go, ‘Oh, we’ll send someone down to deal with that, but we’re not leaving,’ whereas in ‘Immortals’ Tarsem wanted the Gods to be prime physical specimens that went and did the action, and did the fighting. They can go down and be human-looking and do all that stuff. That’s what makes it interesting. That’s the bits you hang onto, so that you make sure that they have human qualities and they’re interesting.

My hopes for this continue to rise, I really liked the first trailer (apart from the sh*tty tagline ‘Titans Will Clash’) and the posters released on Yahoo today measure extremely high on the badassness scale! This is shaping up to be the big blockbuster film I’m looking forward tothe  most next year – along with Inception. I’m generally not a fan of remakes but for me the original hasn’t dated that well so I’m not mad at all with this one.

In the film, the ultimate struggle for power pits men against kings and kings against gods. But the war between the gods themselves could destroy the world. Born of a god but raised as a man, Perseus (Worthington) is helpless to save his family from Hades (Fiennes), vengeful god of the underworld. With nothing left to lose, Perseus volunteers to lead a dangerous mission to defeat Hades before he can seize power from Zeus (Neeson) and unleash hell on Earth. Leading a daring band of warriors, Perseus sets off on a perilous journey deep into forbidden worlds. Battling unholy demons and fearsome beasts, he will only survive if he can accept his power as a god, defy his fate and create his own destiny.