Directed by Dan Bradley
Produced by Vincent Newman
Written by Jeremy Passmore, Carl Ellsworth, Tony Gilroy
Based on Red Dawn by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Music by Ramin Djawadi
Cinematography Mitchell Amundsen
Editing by Hughes Winborne
Studio Contrafilm
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Budget $75 million
A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.
> In June 2010, release of the film was delayed due to MGM’s financial difficulties. The delay came amid growing controversy in China after excerpts of the script were leaked on the website The Awl.
> In January 2011, the first cast photo was released along with news that MGM will release the film once their Chapter 11 restructuring is completed. Red Dawn is one of three already completed MGM projects scheduled to be released in 2011.
> In March 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that MGM is changing the villains in its Red Dawn remake from Chinese to North Korean in order to maintain access to China’s lucrative box office. The changes reportedly cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story’s fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean.
My character’s name is Robert and he kind of starts off as this sort of quieter, almost borderline tech guy, almost like a nerd, and then by the end after all the Chinese has invaded he just sort of loses it and starts like really just kicking ass. So it’s pretty awesome.
There’s a scene where the “Wolverines,” that’s our group of all the teenagers, we’re attacking this security checkpoint and everybody gets like penned down, like the Chinese are kind of fighting back and we’re all kind of struggling and can’t get anywhere, so my character hops up and runs across a rooftop, while getting shot at and takes down a whole bunch of people. It’s really a big hero action moment.
There was one time where we had AK47s, our main weapon throughout the entire film, and we had blank rounds put in, so it’s the main amount of power as a bullet, but there’s no actually projectile coming out. So I have my gun, I have the magazine loaded in, with the bullets in it and everything and so we’re bout ready to go and they say “action.” I go to pull the trigger and I completely forgot to take the safety off, so the safety is still on, and I’m like “gosh, it’s broken. I can’t get.” And they’re like “you got turn the safety off buddy.” And it’s like “yeah, okay thanks.” So that was pretty embarrassing.
I’m a fan of war and action movies. I’ve always wanted to do one, and Red Dawn is a classic so many people love. It’s a really cool story about kids fighting for something much bigger than them. It was an awesome shoot. I got to fire so many different types of weapons and blow up so much stuff. I loved it.
