"He worked his heart out."

Update: Moved the pics of Jake filming in Chicago to a new post :)

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That's Mike Newell on all of the preparation Jake Gyllenhaal did for his role as the Prince of Persia. In this clip from ReelzChannel, Jake talks about the trust he placed in everyone around him in order to do what he had to do:





In this clip, Jake teases a local L.A. reporter about his sartorial choices:



We have some exclusive screenshots of a Prince of Persia battle scene:



What? I didn't say it was from the movie! According to the flickr poster, these are screen shots of a LEGO ad. I've never seen a LEGO ad, so I don't know where or when it aired or was printed.

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For fun, just a couple of goofy shots of Jake from the WonderCon panel. From flickr:

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Four new PoP posters, though just one of Jake. These guys also liked the PoP footage they say at WonderCon.




(PoP photo courtesy of IHJ. Twitter photos by suesues and its_kelseyy. SC series photos courtesy of the Parsons Family.)

"He’s real and he can ride and he can fight and he can shoot..."

That's how Mike Newell describes Jake Gyllenhaal, starring as the Prince of Persia. In an interview covering his long carer, as well as PoP, Newell discusses the real deal:

I’m wondering if you’ve seen other films that have been adapted from video games and sort of what your own approach has been to adapting this particular video game. And specifically, relating to the–

Well, I’ll tell you what it was. I mean, I can tell you what it was; I don’t want to lose part of the audience, but I knew what the guy looked like, I knew the world that he was in, I knew about sixth century Persia, I knew that he was a fantastic athlete and I had the huge good fortune of having Jake Gyllenhaal, who was a good athlete but who worked his socks off. You can’t know how hard he worked to make himself the physical personification of that tiny little video game character. And there he is, he’s real and he can ride and he can fight and he can shoot and he’s a marvelous action hero as well as being the guy that we know from ‘Brokeback Mountain’, who’s a fabulous actor. I was very, very fortunate with Jake. And so, what I was aiming to do was to not produce a simple copy of what was in the video game, but I wanted him to look like that, I wanted him to be able to fight like hell, and I wanted him to be a great action character. And that’s what he gave me. Then, we were very careful about certain kind of key sequences, big sequences in the movie. There’s a sequence– there’s a pursuit in a market, there are several huge fights, there’s the taking of the town…



The director then engages in a bit of NewelBabble when asked about casting actors of Middle Eastern descent:

Well, let me ask you this; you bring up Jake Gyllenhaal– and this can be my last question. I’m a huge fan of Mr Gyllenhaal, incredibly talented, one of the great actors of our generation, but I’m wondering if you at any point considered casting someone, you know, of Middle Eastern descent or something along those lines, in sort of keeping–

No, I did not. Now, I didn’t do that because what I felt was that this was going to be a great, big movie with– that was produced by one of the great brands of American culture– well, two of the great brands, if you like; I mean, you know, Disney is one and Jerry is another– and that therefore, what I should do was to look to their requirements first. But what I absolutely did do was to say that the girl should– and I looked very hard at a lot of actresses from Bollywood, for instance, and some from Turkey and some actually from Iran, two or three from Iran, and so I got very, very interested indeed in that.
And what stuck from that was the look of the girl and the behavior of the girl. In fact, what we had was the next kind of marvelous English actress out of the box. You know, she was 21 when we made the movie, and she’s absolutely tremendous. But those researches in the Bollywood girls and the Iranian girls and what not had left me with a very strong impression of how this girl should behave, what she should look like and the fact that she was a kind of aristocrat. And Jake is not an aristocrat at all; he’s a street kid who has found himself taken into a royal family because he’s an orphan and the King likes the look of him, and it’s a kind of crazy act of sentiment on the King’s part. “I like the look of you, boy. Come and you’re going to be my third son.” But with the girl, she, for me, needed to be very authentic indeed, and she needs to have this Eastern look to her. So the casting process, I never had any doubt. It was me that brought Jake in toward this. From the very first moment that I read it, I knew that he was, for me, the one to beat. I saw lots and lots of excellent people, but I never found anybody who beat my idea of the character, who did my idea of the character, better than Jake, and I convinced Jerry of that.

Huh? Love what he says about Jake. The rest doesn't quite make sense :) I think he's going to have to work on that answer, since it is definitely going to come up again. This one isn't going away.

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Some images of "unreal" Jake and the PoP merchandise, taken at Toy Fair 2010:



Click here or here to see more LEGOS:





For the action figures, click here or here:




I really wish they'd worked harder to get closer to Jake's likeness. I saw a Megan Fox doll that was much closer to reality than Jake's!

Dastan in miniature

According to FBTB.net, LEGO and Disney have premiered their new Prince of Persia line at Comic-Con today.

Herewith a little Dastan, with obligatory facial fuzz.

You can see the rest of the pieces at Flickr.

I suppose I like this set enough, yet there really doesn't seem to be much of a difference between this new, exclusive PoP set and the earlier DIY PoP pieces.


Jake out at Toscana in Brentwood on Tuesday night.


Jake at the Dodgers on Wednesday night.


According to RadarOnline:

Jake Gyllenhaal stepped out on Wednesday night for a low-key outing with another famous face. But don’t worry Reese, it wasn’t another gal!.The actor hit up a baseball game in Los Angeles with his brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard.

“Jake was there with Peter and some other guy, it looked like another dad,” an onlooker told RadarOnline.com. The threesome sat in the Dugout Club seats as they cheered with the rest of the sellout crowd as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-2.

Photos courtesy of Flickr and IHJ.

Lego Land

By now, everyone has heard about Disney's plans to launch a Prince of Persia Lego series.

Great idea, but I think someone beat you to it, Mr. Bruckheimer:


The Vertical Wall-Run


Column Jumping


Fighting, using the Dagger of Time



ShadowViking, call your lawyer!

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IHJ added some new pics of the Prince returning to L.A.

Jake in LA and Persia

Just freshening up the post with some Jake - in LA on the 18th:



A little more information from Variety on Prince of Persia:

"Persia" will mark the first time Jake Gyllenhaal has worked with Bruckheimer.

"He's a wonderful actor," Bruckheimer said. "He's someone I've been watching for a long time and somebody I've always wanted to work with."

And look - the official poster already:


Okay, okay, so that was Fluorescent Lamp's doing. The original, official poster, minus Jake's starring name, can be seen here.

They do move fast, though. GyllenBabble has gotten the exclusive on the PoP action figure, as well as the elaborate stunts Jake will be doing. (click to embiggen for full, dramatic effect!)

Action Figure Jake...err...Dastan


The Vertical Wall-Run


Column Jumping


Fighting, using the Dagger of Time

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Bigger versions of the Ramey photos from the weekend. Still need the whole set, but these are fun:

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There are some articles floating around the net about the trades (Variety and Hollywood Reporter) not giving credit to online sources who break news stories, as Latino Review did with Jake/Prince of Persia. It's an interesting information age we're living in.

Of course, we also knew before the trades ;)

(Jake/Reese pics courtesy of KateBlogsworth. Note: She calls everyone slags, not just Jake and Reese! Exclusive action shots made by ShadowViking on flickr. New Jake pics courtesy of IHJ.)