Thomas Jane Not Jonah Hex; 279 Hours Footage Shot For Crank 2

Mark NeveldineandBrian Taylor, the two madmen behindCrank, appeared onThe Movie Blog Uncutand talked briefly about their upcoming adaptation ofJonah Hex.

For those of you who don’t remember, a few months ago, a photo of Thomas Jane made up to look like Jonah Hex leaked onto the internet. At first some believed it to be a concept photo for the actual film, but Neveldine and Taylor quickly denied any knowledge. Jane came out and publicly admitted that the concept photo was actually something he did on spec, in an attempt to convince Neveldine and Taylor to cast him in the film. So what is the outcome? Will Neveldine and Taylor cast Jane as the gunslinging anti-hero?

“He’s a great guy,” admitted Brian Taylor, later adding “But we… don’t see the guy as Jonah Hex, to be quite honest with you. But we like him.”

“It was a really huge compliment to us,” Mark Neveldine added. “And we’ll have him in one of our movies.”

So who is going to play Jonah Hex? The directing duo wouldn’t reveal any names.

“We have some options.”

And the casting process won’t really begin for a few more months. The duo are still hard at work editing Crank 2: High Voltage, and are planning to begin pre production in January 2009. Principal photography would begin in March 2009 in either Louisiana, Georgia or Arizona.

Another interesting tidbit that was revealed during the show was in relation tothe lightweight consumer grade camerasthat they used to shoot the Crank sequel. Apparently the cameras allowed for so much freedom, that they shot over 279 hours of footage in the 31 days of production, which is more footage thanJames Cameron shot onTitanic (138 days).