CraveOnline: Looking at the films in what I will insist on calling “The Invisible London Trilogy,” you’ve worked with some very talented directors before: Stephen Frears, David Cronenberg. Did they develop your scripts beyond what you had originally intended?
Steven Knight: Not really. Frears… This is absolutely what happened. Frears read the draft that I submitted to him and said, “Could you just change the ending?” [Laughs] Which was not helpful, which is not helpful. But by “the end” he meant the last two pages. So I went away and changed it and said okay, fine. That was it. […] With David, again, the script was there and we had three days booked in a hotel in Toronto, and we ended up just doing two hours of just going through the script. With Cronenberg the changes were more physical. In other words, the fight scene which is so famous, that developed from Viggo [Mortensen] in particular being very instrumental in how that worked. So there are huge elements of that film that developed as part of the process of filming.
The original ending of Dirty Pretty Things, was it dramatically different?
It was a little sadder than it is, and then interestingly – for those who are interested in these sort of tangential facts – we also, at the behest of the people who were financing the film, we shot a happy ending, a properly happy ending, in New York. We shot it. I thought great, we’ll go to New York, shoot something. It’ll be fun. Then mercifully we showed it to an audience and they chose the equivocal ending.
Is Eastern Promises 2 out of the question at this point?
No! It’s very in the question. Yeah, because we’ve had a bit of a dance in terms of how we’re going to it, but it’s looking better now than it has for a while, and the script’s written, and I feel it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. I think it’s better than the first one, in my opinion. We’re hoping, fingers crossed, that we can get it going sometime next year.
I think we’re all really intrigued by the end of the original Eastern Promises and the moral choice that Viggo’s character made. Did you know early on where you wanted to take a sequel?
Not, not at all. Originally, the idea of a sequel, I thought they were joking. I thought, never. It was almost like somebody saying, “What about the merchandising?” Hang on, it’s not that sort of film. [Laughs] Interestingly, people involved [said] “Isn’t that what you meant when you left him sitting there, thinking?” A lot of people thought that was a deliberate set-up for the next chapter, but it wasn’t at the time. But when I looked at it again I thought, well, why not? It would work and it would be interesting. Then I started writing it. It’s fun to do. Hopefully we’ll get there.
What was he thinking, do you think? You get to decide that.
You’ll see, if and when it gets made, you’ll see that he feels at the end of the first one that he just has to stay a little bit longer and then he’ll get out. He’ll have done his bit. But of course he didn’t.
Judging from the story and the character, I wonder if he’s going to think “I’ll stay a little bit longer” for ten or twenty years at this point.
Well, it’s taken a while for the second one to get made [laughs] so maybe that is going to be the time frame. But it sort of is a man who’s devoting his life to Mother Russia, and all that Russian stuff about patriotism which is very difficult for Westerners to get. He devotes himself, and when he’s done his bit […], he goes back to them and says “I’ve finished.” And they say, “No you haven’t.”
Do Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises and Hummingbird take place in the same movie universe? Could the protagonists ever interact in some way?
Well, that’s an interesting thought. I’ve never concentrated on that. I mean, they’re in the same city in the same time, roughly, so they could cross paths in the city but certainly not in any story that I’ve written.
I would love to see that, if Viggo needs to see a doctor it’s just Chiwetel Ejiofor. That would be awesome.
[Laughs] Yes!
And Jason Statham just happens to be his driver, but you never talk about it.
And the doctor goes home and finds Jason Statham living in his apartment.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
