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Channing Tatum is Fighting
By Fred Topel | Images property of Rogue Pictures
Fighting leaves no mystery about what it’s about. Channing Tatum plays a street hustler who gets into the world of underground fighting. The film’s production was much more complicated than it’s title, beginning as a movie about a totally different sport.
Channing Tatum on Fighting
“The funny thing was this was a basketball film,” Tatum said. “The most hilarious thing was I was like, ‘I don’t want to do a basketball film.’ Way before [director] Dito [Montiel] was even on it, I tried to think of the one director that I know would never do a basketball movie, because they were like, ‘Well, what director do you want?’ I’m like, Dito, because I never wanted to do a basketball movie. Next thing I know, lo and behold, a month later he calls me up and he’s like, ‘Hey, I know. I know it’s a basketball movie but just come meet. Come meet, I’ve got a take on it.’ I come meet him and he tells me it’s Midnight Cowboy. I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s amazing. I would love to play Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, especially your version of Midnight Cowboy.’ Then, all of a sudden, I’m still like, ‘Wait a minute, we haven’t taken basketball out of it. It’s still a basketball movie, Dito. We can’t get away from this.’ He’s like, ‘I know, I know, just trust me. We’ll get it out’ or ‘We’ll figure it out.’ I’m like we can’t do that.”
Ultimately, the rough nature of the courts led naturally into flat out fighting. “Finally, throughout all the different versions of what we were doing and we had less than three weeks to get the movie going, I just suggested let’s just make a fighting film, because the basketball just kept getting more and more violent, knowing Dito. More and more violent, I’m like right, let’s just take the basketball out. Then [Kevin] Misher, our producer, was just like, ‘[Sighs] I don't know if I can do that. Let me work on it.’ Then a week later, they did it and it was awesome.”
Fighting
Fighting
Fighting
Fighting
Then Tatum wanted to make sure it wasn’t all about the fights. “We really wanted to make a commercial film with decent acting and good characters because I think people just think now, they think commercial film, oh great, the acting is not going to be that great anymore, just because they don’t care. They just want to see a big huge blow up of a movie. That’s really what we want to do. We had an opportunity to bring those characters to a commercial film and we got really excited about it.”
That didn’t save him from getting his nosed bashed across his face filming a fight scene. “Yeah, the first fight, the Russian fight. My nose was like over here after like the third or fourth take because that was the fight that we tried to do something different. We didn’t want it all to be choreographed. We kind of tried to do something messy, something really, really messy and hands in the face and missing, hitting shoulders. We just wanted to feel as much like a real fight because in a real fight you don’t know who’s winning until the other person is on the ground and he’s lost. So that’s how we wanted the fight to feel and that fight was not choreographed at all. We sort of knew what direction to go in and how we wanted the fight to end. And the rest of it was just us and then just fighting.”
The film ends on an open ended note. Whether a sequel would pick up right from there or some time later, Tatum is open-minded. “If it’s Terrence [Howard] and Dito, absolutely. I don't know, maybe if they’re not involved. Look, I love those guys and I couldn’t see this movie being done without them. You can pretty much start any Fighting 2 with Terrence knocking on the door, ‘I’m in trouble’ and you’re like right, of course. Of course you’re in trouble. I would totally do it. I don't think they’re going to do anything bad.”
Fighting opens to theaters April 24th.
For the trailer, poster, stills and more movie info, go to the Fighting Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Images property of Rogue Pictures
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