If anyone is responsible for the rash of subtle, spooky ghost stories that have been haunting your local multiplex for the last few years then it is Hideo Nakata, the man who brought audiences the original Ringu back in 1998. After directing a sequel to his Japanese blockbuster in 1999, Nakata made his Hollywood debut with The Ring Two in 2002. Massive box office ratings were the result and the filmmaker now finds himself pondering his next move, as SciFiNow discovers…
Are you going to be doing a third Ring film?
I know that Dreamworks has announced that they will make the next one but there is no offer to me yet. However, I am now working on a remake of The Entity and after that I would like to continue making some movies back in Japan – that is my ideal situation.
Where do you prefer making movies: Hollywood or Japan?
I do miss the Japanese way of filmmaking but… at the same time as long as there are offers for me to make films in America then I would like to continue working here as well. Like I said, ideally I would like to make movies in both countries. In Japan, of course, we are given less money and time so we have to be really efficient but, because we are working on smaller budgets, we do have a tradition that film producers and companies respect a director’s vision. But with Hollywood I like to use this analogy: I think that I am a car designer here – it is more like an industrial product in America, rather than a piece of art. We have to make sure the movie can appeal to the universal audience, which means that there is a long tradition of test screenings over here.
Was it strange to do the sequel to a remake of your own film?
(Laughs) I feel like I was destined to make Ring Two. Isn’t it ironic that I got that job? It was actually offered to me – I didn’t even look for it. I came over to Hollywood, for the first time, a few years ago and I kept saying that I would not make a horror movie as my first American picture because I did not want to put myself into a small box as a filmmaker. I wanted to explore other genres but then Dreamworks approached me and asked me if I would be interested in reading the script to Ring Two. I said yes and this was, to a large extent, because I was desperate for another project. It was really strange that I would be offered the sequel to the remake of my movie but the reason I said yes was simply because the script was persuasive and different from my Ringu 2. If it had been similar then I probably wouldn’t have done it.
Why did you not direct Ringu 0 – the final part of the Japanese Ringu trilogy?
When I was doing the post-production on Ringu 2 in Japan, I told my producer that I would not make the next one, even if they wanted me to. But they did offer it to me and I said no – however, I warned them early on that I would not do it because, at the time, I just didn’t want to repeat myself. I don’t want to disappoint people, but the only reason I did The Ring Two is because I wanted to make a big movie in America and I had spent two years of my life trying to do this. I was curious about what would be the difference between Japanese and American filmmaking and now I am hoping that I can make more interesting movies here.
What did you think of the American remake of Dark Water?
I think it was a very different movie but I love the work of Walter Salles, who directed it, and I was glad that he was the person to do it. I think the biggest difference between his Dark Water and mine is in regards to how he handles the supernatural situations. For example, I think that Walter wanted to keep a more realistic feeling to his film. Horror movies often have to deal with supernatural things that can be stupid or unrealistic and it is always difficult to try and make this believable. For example, the ghost coming out of the TV in Ringu is really absurd so I had to be careful not to be laughed at during that moment. When I told people that, at the climax of Ringu, the ghost was going to come out from the television set they would just smile at me because it sounded stupid, but I was careful in terms of creating the tension and the anxiety of fear in the build-up to that scene.
Did you enjoy the original American remake of The Ring?
Yes, I really enjoyed watching Gore Verbinski’s Ring and I met him on the set of it too. I knew that some of the key scenes in the American version would look similar to my movie, but when I first watched the remake I really enjoyed it. I saw it with the scriptwriter of the original film, Hiroshi Takahashi, and we both predicted that it was going to be really successful because, you know, it kept the very quiet, creepy atmosphere which our version also had.
Is it safe to presume that you are a fan of horror movies?
Um… I do not want to disappoint my fans in Britain but I am not a huge fan of horror. I am aware that it might be my fate, and these movies are a crucial part of my career but I have just never been a horror fan myself. So after I made the two Ringu movies – and before Ringu I had made a horror picture called Ghost Actress as my debut – I was actually completely fed up with making these types of films (laughs).
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