Desde Hollywood was among the fortunate outlets invited to cover the Los Angeles press conference of RAMPAGE (now playing)!

Read below what the talents involved in the Warner Bros. Pictures blockbuster had to say, including Director Brad Peyton, and stars Dwayne Johnson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Manganiello, Malin Akerman, and Naomie Harris.

Dwayne, how did you set out to break the video game to movie curse, with Rampage?

DWAYNE JOHNSON: We were all very aware, going in, of the video game curse that has been rampant throughout Hollywood, over the years. I made Doom, so I’ve lived the curse.

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: I love Doom!

JOHNSON: Thank you so much. You’re one of the few. Thank you! It was probably just being aware of the movie we were making, and not trying to be anything else, other than what we are. What we are is a big, fun ride. It’s a crazy, absurd idea, and it’s a fine needle to thread. In making the movie, the goal was to lean into the absurdity of it and bring in the best filmmakers we could. We got WETA Digital at a great time, where they’re so incredibly ambitious, to raise the bar with these monsters. They were beholden to a mythology, but they knew they had room to expand, with the flying wolf and the very sharp pins, and the alligator that was just monstrous and the size of a football field. On a side note, what was very cool was that WETA was so ambitious and excited that these monsters, throughout the movie, don’t stay one size. They actually continue to grow. By the end of the movie, the alligator is the size of a football field and a half. So, it was a matter of leaning in to the ridiculousness of it, and I mean that in the most positive way, but then also trying to find a rooted anchor in it and making sure that that relationship was fun. For the sign language with the gorilla, I had sign language consultations that were helping me. There was a time when we were creating the script and chopping it up where we felt, “What if my best friend also had the personality of a 12-year-old?,” which is not too far from my own personality. And then, we sent the rest of the cast the script and said, “Everybody here has got a lot going on and you all come from different genres and areas in the business, so what do you think?” And they all loved it.

RAMPAGE

Dwayne, now that you’ve done three films together – Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, San Andreas and Rampage – what makes you want to keep working with Brad Peyton?

JOHNSON: I enjoy working with Brad. This is my third movie with him. There is ambition there. He’s a very ambitious director. I enjoy working with him, creatively. I come from the world of sports, and I enjoy being coached and pushed. Not a lot of directors feel comfortable in that space, and that’s okay. I’ll find my inspiration and motivation in other ways and make the project work. They don’t all have to have a coach’s mentality, but Brad does have that, despite him always underplaying it and saying, “I’m from Canada and I like to apologize.” He’s a very ambitious guy. If this is the line, he’s okay to go right up to the line, or to step over the line. We don’t get a lot of shots at this, in any business, so if you’re gonna take a swing, why not take a swing for the fences and go for it. We have the ability, the resources and the talent to come to the table for us, so we’ll take a swing and see what happens. Also, I love the fact that he loves movies. He loves movies that make people feel good, and I like that, too. We’re very similar. Our DNA is like that. We invest so much time in these movies and, as you know, movie-making is hard and it takes many, many months, and then there are months of post and you promote it, like we’re doing now. It takes a long time, especially for directors. I have the ability to make a movie and, even if I’m producing the movie, I can still go on and make other movies and have other movies in development because I’m not directing. Brad is on a movie for two or three years, and the passion shows. He’s influenced by [Steven] Spielberg and James Cameron, and movies like that, and I like that. You have a responsibility to not only make a good movie, but I also like the DNA that we share to make the movie fun for the audience and make sure that they’re going home, floating in some way and feeling great about what they just saw because they had a great experience. That’s what movies should be, and are, to us.

Jeffrey, in what ways did being a part of a film the size of Rampage surprise you?

MORGAN: It’s a dream come true, doing a movie like this, with Brad and DJ (Dwayne Johnson). When someone calls and says, “Hey, would you be interested in doing a movie with Dwayne, and it’s got monsters in it?,” that’s what you dream about, as a little kid, even though I’m way older than he is. And Brad is so on top of it. There’s a lot of green screen and looking at a tennis ball, but he was so meticulous in his prep that he had scenes done on an iPad, that we could see. When you’re talking about monsters and buildings falling, that really helped a lot. But then, to see the final product is like, “Yeah, go Dwayne!”

Joe, how did you get this job?

JOE MANGANIELLO: I wrote a version of a Dungeons and Dragons film when it was at Warner Bros. I found out that Brad was also a big fan of the property and was looking to direct a Dungeons and Dragons film, and they were talking to [Dwayne] about it, as well. So, I got my agents to connect me to Brad. I said, “I wanna talk to Brad. I wanna see what his idea is. I have this script and I wanna talk to him.” So, we got on a Skype call and, after a couple of minutes, Brad was like, “Hey, man, listen, I’m down in Atlanta. I’m getting ready to shoot this movie Rampage. I’ve got this great role, if you wanna play it. Why don’t you come down and shoot this movie, we’ll talk about Dungeons and Dragons, and we’ll go from there?” That’s how I ended up in Rampage.

Dwayne, what did you most enjoy about the relationship between Davis and the gorilla, George?

JOHNSON: The relationship between myself and the gorilla, George, was something that we talked about very early, in terms of how we were going to produce the movie and make it. We felt like you can have the calamity of a movie like this and the expectation of the group that created and did San Andreas and what this next iteration is going to be like, especially with something like Rampage. The conceit of this idea is an absurd, ridiculous one, in that we have three gigantic monsters completely destroying the city of Chicago. The original video game didn’t have a complex storyline, like you find in today’s video games. It was fairly one-note. We took a lot of swings and a lot of cracks at it and got it to a really good place, where it was viable and believable, and more importantly, fun. And then, we sat around the table and thought, “We need an anchor. What’s going to anchor this movie, in heart and soul?” That was the relationship between myself and my best friend, who is a rare gigantic albino gorilla. We felt that, if we could nail that anchor, then we really had a shot at making a movie that people really wanted to go on the ride with. Also, more importantly, we had a shot at making a movie that stood the test of time. That was important to us, in the monster genre. There have been a lot of great ones in the past, with King Kong and Godzilla, and even Jurassic Park. We just wanted to try to hopefully raise the bar, just a little bit, and anchor it in a relationship.

Dwayne, after playing characters in Central Intelligence and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle that weren’t so sure of themselves, was it fun to get to play a total bad-ass again?

JOHNSON: It was a lot of fun playing a total bad-ass. It’s fun and cool to be a bad-ass, and it’s awesome, but I find it more interesting and funnier and more entertaining when something undercuts the bad-assness. At the end of the day, this kind of movie is really just so much fun. I’ve had the opportunity to play some really cool characters in the past, that have been some really cool bad-ass guys, but there’s something inherently interesting, to me, when you can play a bad-ass, but the foe, or antagonist, that you’re looking at, you have to look up at and run from. I love that! Anytime I can put myself in a position like that is great, especially for a movie like this, where you have the latitude to just have so much fun.

RAMPAGE

Jeffrey, your character has a very over-the-top swagger and vibe to him. How did you build that character? Was he like that in the script?

MORGAN: I have to give mad props to our director, Brad. He really had this idea of what Russell was gonna be. Your introduction to him is cool, and Brad had that all in his head. He was like, “I’m gonna start with the cowboy boots, and we’ll come up and see this big-ass belt buckle.” It was a whole visual thing. At first, I was like, “This is a lot! It might be too much!” And then, we got there and started picking out belt buckles and guns, and the gun had me like, “Yeah!” He wears the gun in a place that you could never wear a gun, in real life, right in front of his dick. Who holds a gun there?! But, it was so cool. It’s probably not the most practical, but it worked. The character all came from his wardrobe and talking to Brad. He really talked me into it. At first, I was like, “Can we underplay it a little bit?” But by the end of it, I was like, “How big can I go?!”

Davis clearly prefers the company of animals to humans. Are any of you big animal lovers?

JOHNSON: I love animals! I have horses and dogs, and I raise fish, specifically bass. Probably the best part about making this movie was consulting with the Dian Fossey Foundation. We were down in Atlanta, and I had an opportunity to go to the Atlanta zoo and spend time with the gorillas down there and the primatologists to understand their behaviors, emotions and nuances. That was an amazing process for me. I also spent a little bit of time down in the Everglades with an alligator, and I got to hold the alligator. It was great! I don’t recommend it because it’s very dangerous.

MANGANIELLO: I worked for five years on True Blood, and they used to bring giant live wolves in, for most of my scenes. I’m no stranger to working with wolves. Unfortunately, on this film, the wolves weren’t listening and doing what I said, this time. I’m an animal lover, but my character is totally not.

MORGAN: I live on a farm and I rescue animals, for a living. Well, not for a living. I lose money rescuing animals. I have alpacas, llamas and cattle, and everything lives. What’s happened is that it’s turned into a rescue. Farms in the area that can no longer take care of their animals or want to put animals down, I bring the animals over, so I’ve got a lot of animals and they’re all very happy.

Rampage is a movie that’s very much built for the big screen. What was the movie that made you fall in love with the theater-going experience?

JOHNSON: For me, it was the first Jurassic Park. I’ll go back even before that and say Indiana Jones in 1981. I would say those two movies, but specifically, I remember watching Jurassic Park and feeling the theater shake when the dinosaurs starts to walk. I really was blown away by that experience. You see a lot of the influence of that, in Brad’s filmmaking and with some of our monsters, especially Lizzie, at the end, when she grows to outstanding proportions.

RAMPAGE is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Primatologist Davis Okoye shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent gorilla who has been in his care since birth. But a rogue genetic experiment gone awry transforms this gentle ape into a raging monster. As these newly created monsters tear across North America, destroying everything in their path, Okoye teams with a discredited genetic engineer to secure an antidote, fighting his way through an ever-changing battlefield, not only to halt a global catastrophe but to save the fearsome creature that was once his friend.

>