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	Heavy Metal

Kevin Eastman: I was a fan of the magazine in 1977, when it first came out. And that led me to underground comics, which led me to self-publishing, which led to the time when we created the [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles, instead of going to Marvel or DC we went the underground comics route. The Turtles success allowed me to buy Heavy Metal Magazine in 1991.

SPACE.com: How and when did you get started talking about Heavy Metal 2000?

KE: The foundation was laid when Heavy Metal I was re-released in theaters in the spring of 1996 and then finally for the first time on video.

Fortunately all the rights had reverted back to whoever owned Heavy Metal magazine, which was me. In the fall of 1996 I wrote the first draft of the story I wanted to tell in the second movie, making it a single story, as opposed to trying to do what Ivan Reitman had already done so well with the little vignettes.

SPACE.com: Why did you go with the single story over the vignettes?

KE: Mainly because I felt that it really wasn’t a sequel to the first movie. I wanted to go with a single film for the next movie, and then if we were able to continue doing more films, the third film wouldn’t be anything akin to the first or the second, it would be something different altogether.

SPACE.com: How did you know that this is the type of story you wanted to go with?

KE: It was an accumulation of a number of ideas that sort of all intersected at just around this time. I had done a graphic novel called The Melting Pot with Simon Bisley that came out in 1994.

At the same time I had been developing an idea for a female character, and had done a number of designs and a short story called "F.A.K.K.2".

But as a writer I tend to lean on people to inspire me to bring a character to life, and I really never met anybody that could help me with the vision of this character, and so I kind of shelved it until I met [my wife] Julie Strain.

And with that inspiration, I pulled the old F.A.K.K.2 concept out, revamped the whole thing, threw it in a blender with Melting Pot and structured that into an idea that I felt would make a great Heavy Metal-style movie.

So I completed that treatment early in the fall of ’96. I did about 400 pages of storyboards to kind of flesh out points in the story, and then together with Simon Bisley, we did about 70 paintings, and that was what we presented as kind of the look, feel, visual, the whole package of what we wanted Heavy Metal to be.

SPACE.com: How many minutes of animation did you create?

KE: It was a lot more than the 87-minute movie. I don’t know if it was exactly 140 minutes, but I know that there were whole scenes that were actually drawn, animated in pencil and not completed in computer ink and paint because they simply ran out of time.

SPACE.com: Will those scenes end up on the DVD?

KE: A bunch of that material mysteriously disappeared. We did however have a bunch of animatics -- which are not pencil drawings, there are some pencil tests -- and some pencil scenes that were cut out that were still intact that I had copies of that will be on the DVD.

SPACE.com: I understand the game has been voted Sexiest Game by Details?

KE: Yeah, they’ve done a bunch of neat things with it. Besides a series of cover features inside and PC Accelerator, it’s in the Top Ten of games for 2000 by PC Gamer.

SPACE.com: When you were developing the movie, were you developing the game alongside?

KE: Yeah. When we had our first series of meetings with the gang over at Ritual [Entertainment, developers of the F.A.K.K.2 game], we had an extensive amount of work done, all the paintings and the storyboards and stuff that we had started with, and I think we had done a draft or two beyond that of the screenplay.

We thought it would be best would be to do the sequel to the movie in game form. So you can watch the movie and then play the game and pick it up 25 years after the movie has ended. That also gave them room to expand and use a lot of their own ideas to come up with new characters, new environments, new kinds of things that would fit the kind of game play, the puzzles and the things like that within that need to be solved.

SPACE.com: When will the film be in theaters?

KE: What I understand now is that they are looking to put it in theaters in mid-September, doing it as a midnight movie in 50 places around the country, and see how it grows from there.

[Distributor] Columbia/Tri-Star did a deal with Starz Encore Group, which included original programming. Our movie ended up being [considered] original programming, which is why the movie is making its premiere on Starz the 14th of July at midnight. Then Columbia is gearing up for the DVD release in October-ish.

SPACE.com: What’s next for Heavy Metal? You said you were looking at TV for the sequel? Will that be a F.A.K.K.2 sequel or will it be completely different?

KE: Julie and I have decided we’re going to take a long nap first. I’m kidding. Julie’s been really working the promotional trail. With respect to F.A.K.K.2, the natural progression will be the game folks will continue with level packs and perhaps a second game.

I don’t think the next movie -- which is something we would like to do -- will be a F.A.K.K.2 movie, I’d like to do something else. Simon Bisley and I have got a couple ideas that we’re doing. They will carry the Heavy Metal sort of brand, but it will be something else and something kind of nutty.

We’ve been looking at a direct to video series of six movies that would be animated. They would be a great deal less [expensive] than the Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 movie, but have sort of been Heavy Metal-inspired and carry the Heavy Metal trademark.