‘Hypnotic’: Robert Rodriguez On His Hitchcockian Thriller, Close Calls With Franchise Films, & ‘Alita 2’ [The Discourse Podcast]

In today’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo gets hypnotized by Robert Rodriguez (“Desperado,” “Sin City,” “The Book of Boba Fett”). The prolific writer/producer/director is currently promoting his latest film, “Hypnotic,” which follows a detective (Ben Affleck) who relentlessly pursues a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program. The film also stars Alice Braga, William Fichtner, JD Pardo, and Jackie Earle Haley.

READ MORE: ‘Hypnotic’ Review: Robert Rodriguez & Ben Affleck Team For An ‘Inception’-Ish Nolan-Like Thriller [SXSW]

During the chat, Rodriguez discussed how “Hypnotic” has been a passion project that’s been stirring since the early-2000s and was born out of his unlikely love for Alfred Hitchcock and one-word titles.

“No one really does those Hitchcock movies anymore,” Rodriguez said. “Chris Nolan started doing it to the hilt, but no one’s really doing it. And then I thought, I would love to do something like that with a lot of twists. And that’s how I came up with it. I came up with it on ‘Spy Kids 2,’ and I was thinking, what’s a one-word title – [Hitchcock] always had ‘Psycho,’ ‘Vertigo,’ ‘Frenzy.’ One-word titles that were really cool. If he had kept going, what would have been his next movie? And I thought ‘Hypnotic!’ It popped into my head, and I thought, ‘OK, what does that mean?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s the guy you can’t catch! It’s the guy you might meet, and he’ll drain your bank account, take your car – you don’t even remember meeting him. And there’s a small percentage of people in the world who have this ability. It’s not hypnotism, it’s something else. And there’s a cop that’s trying to catch this guy and he’s just uncatchable!’ That’s a great villain.”

Rodriguez also spoke about his wide-ranging career that exploded during the ’90s independent film boom. This led to many studio projects being thrown his way – some of which nearly came to pass, but just couldn’t get across the finish line for one reason or another. Rodriguez was quick to comment on why he never actually went ahead and took on some of the big franchises that were offered like, “X-Men” and Kevin Smith’s “Superman Lives.”

“I was never making ‘Superman,’ I was never making ‘X-Men,’ but I read early drafts and they were early drafts,” Rodriguez shared. “Like they would require so much work to make them work that at that point you might as well be making your own thing that you can control. Why am I going to go figure this out for these guys? I never got like a golden script that was like the movie that it turned out to be, so it was easy not to make those.”

Rodriguez collaborator and producer, Jon Landau, has also been speaking in recent interviews about things finally heating up on discussions for a sequel to Rodriguez’s 2019 hit, “Alita: Battle Angel,” which Rodriguez confirmed during the podcast interview.

“We’ve definitely been talking about that,” Rodriguez said. “It’s something Jim [Cameron] outlined from the beginning. He had three films very meticulously outlined because he meant to make it a series. We would love to get that going. Things got complicated when Fox got bought by Disney and then Fox wasn’t making anything for a while. We didn’t know what was going on because Disney was focused on Disney stuff, but now they are making Fox movies again, so there might be a chance. So, we’re always holding out hope that we can put that together because we’d love to do that.”

“Hypnotic” will be in theaters on May 12. You can listen to the entire conversation with Robert Rodriguez below:

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