October 09, 2011

‘Real Steel’ director looks at film’s ‘Twilight Zone’ origins

Two boxing 'bots in a scene from "Real Steel." (DreamWorks)

“Real Steel,” the Hugh Jackman-starring robot-boxing movie out in theaters this weekend, owes a lot to its first incarnation — as a sci-fi short story by Richard Matheson that the author helped adapt into a 1963 “Twilight Zone” episode, the film’s director said.

Shawn Levy and Evangeline Lilly talked about the origins of the film during Monday’s early IMAX screening, hosted by Hero Complex’s Geoff Boucher.

“It’s been in development for eight, nine years, and frankly, in that period, ‘Transformers’ got made, so that made a certain tonality kind of off limits because it had been done,” Levy said.

Hear more about “Real Steel’s” back story in the video above, and be sure to check out the previous installments of the interview talking about Jackman’s generosity as an actor, the decision to film with actual remote-controlled robots, the casting of young Dakota Goyo and Lilly’s take on the heart of the story.

— Noelene Clark

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