Filmmaker Craig Brewer is back in town and happy about it.
Last weekend, Brewer completed the Atlanta-based shoot on his roughly $25 million remake of iconic ’80s film Footloose. After flying back and forth between Atlanta and Memphis on a few earlier mid-shoot trips, this time wife Jodi drove to Atlanta so that Brewer could haul “all of [his] crap back home.”
Brewer has a couple of weeks downtime before he flies out to Los Angeles to begin post-production on the film, which is tentatively scheduled for a spring 2011 national release.
The 49-day Footloose shot was significantly longer — and more involved — than the shoots for his previous features, Hustle & Flow (23 days) and Black Snake Moan (roughly 30 days).
“It’s a big movie,” Brewer says. “There’s a lot that happens in it. It’s the first time I’ve been in a production of that size. It really is a train that won’t stop.
For the first time, Brewer had to turn over some shots to a second unit director, relinquishing some control and presiding over the dailies coming in from the other unit.
“This wasn’t like Hustle, where I could be there for every shot,” he says of the scope of the job. “The first 40 days of the 50-day shoot, it’s like you’re climbing, but that last 10 days you feel this momentum and you want it to slow down. And now that I’m down at the bottom of the mountain, there’s another mountain for post-production [looming].
