Big Stars, Little Budget: Comic-Con and Hollywood

Rainn Wilson takes a break from The Office

Every movie previewed at Comic-con isn’t produced by wealthy production companies, some are made by independent production houses. They use Comic-Coin as a way to get the word out to the masses about their film.

"Super" is a story about a man who falls in love with his wife, man loses wife to another man, man dresses up like a comic book hero to win his wife back. The movie stars Rainn Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion. The movie may be an independent film, but it has some of Hollywood’s elite on the cast. The movie's stars, minus Bacon, told the Comic-Con audience about their drive to make the movie and the production process.

“All of the people on the stage did this because of their passion,” said the movie’s writer/director James Gunn. “All the actors were paid the lowest amount they could be paid by the guild.”

The movie is part comedy, part drama. Wilson’s character likes to fight crime using a pipe wrench. It’s hard to imagine a pipe wrench being funny, but in the trailer Wilson  pulls it off.  Page plays a psychopathic teenager who befriends Wilson and becomes his sidekick.

The movie was written by James Gunn eight years ago. Gunn said the script kept getting put to the side while he worked on other projects.

The script became the center of Gunn’s attention just by chance. While Gunn’s ex-wife Jenna Fischer was hanging out on the set with her “The Office” cast mate Rainn Wilson,  the script once again became Gunn’s focus.

“I was eating some of the candies from the dispenser, hanging out next to Jenna Fischer, when she got a call from her husband,” Wilson said. Gunn was out of projects to work on and looking for something new, during the conversation Wilson and Fischer suggested Gunn dust the of the script and put it into play, with Wilson as the lead.

By the time Wilson return to his desk on the set of  "The Office" there was already a copy of the script in his email.

“I remember you said, my hands are trembling I can’t stop shaking,” Gunn said about Wilson when he saw the script for the first time. 

From there, the pair set out to assemble a cast.

“We said, we need an Ellen Page type and Liv Tyler Type, then we said let's just send them the script,” Wilson said.

The movie was shot very quickly. The speed of the film became the spine of the whole movie, Gunn said.

"Super" hits theaters in 2011.

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