Rope A Dope 2
Description :
In the Rope a Dope sequel we upped the ante. I get what’s so fun about sequels now, minus the making a ton of cash part. Sometimes you find a theme you’re not done playing variations of yet, and sometimes the severe limitations in terms of budget, equipment, time, talent, location, and all these other constraints get out of your way just one quick year later. That’s what happened during Rope a Dope 2. (Check out Rope a Dope 1 here if you ain’t familiar.) It was weird to see that Tom Cruise movie come out (unnoticed?) with many of the same jokes, gags, and plot points as our humble little movie. When Clayton, the producer/ stunt coordinator asked us to make the sequel, we knew we had to really top it. Eric elaborated on the idea he already had a year ago - to double down on the Groundhog Day premise and to create a dual timeline, and we spent some months cleaning it up and making sure that it actually works. We assembled the crew and just never looked back. The production itself was quite a journey. Some scenes went through four re-shoots (well three and a half considering one of them was interrupted by an armed robbery in which our $60k Red Epic was forever taken from us at gunpoint). But one of the most brutal decisions the stunt team made was the the decision to re-shoot the last fight inside the ring. We had a perfectly good fight that worked with all the moves and the story in there. But it was done in a rush and the stunt team was just not satisfied with the results. We went back to the ring to spend 14 more hours beating our two leads up. Our aim was to create something that was spectacular, beautiful, and full of drama and humor - something that you can appreciate even if you were not remotely interested in the genre.
Credits :
Starring Eric Jacobus, Dennis Ruel, Chris Villa, Ken Quitugua, Edward Kahana Jr., and Danny DeGregorio
Featuring Terry Zukowski, Felicia Victoria Chanco, and the one-and-only Boots Riley of The Coup
Produced by Clayton Barber and Freddie Poole
Director of Photography: Drew Daniels
Co-produced by Colin Shane and Pete Lee
Line Producer: Vicki de Mey
Directed by Pete Lee and Eric Jacobus
Written by Eric Jacobus and Clayton Barber
Edited by Eric Jacobus
Stunt performers: Shaun Finney, Thomas Tan, Lucas Okuma, Allen Quindiagan, Ashley Short, Darren Holmquist, Eric Nguyen, Bridger Fox, Brandon Daranouvongs, Jason Jiho Kim, Leonard Zhang, and Alain Bloch
Shot on a Red Epic, Red Dragon, or a Sony FS100 depending on which camera got stolen that week. But mostly Red Epic.