Interview by Rafy Mediavilla, w/ actor Aleks Paunovic on channeling his inner tech guy / Lionsgate movie “Zero Contact”. Out May 27! #ZeroContact
Starring Academy Award® winner Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs), this high-tech thriller chillingly reimagines our isolated, virtual world. Hopkins plays Finley Hart, the eccentric genius behind a global data-mining program. Upon his death, five remote agents — including Finley’s son — are contacted by a mysterious A.I. entity to reactivate the initiative, which may enable time travel. As sinister events occur at each of the agents’ homes, they must decide whether entering their passwords will save the world…or destroy it.
Criticólogos:
What was your initial response to how this project came about in the end? Given it was shot 17 different countries all during the lockdown.
Aleks Paunovic:
For me, it was, you know, the pandemic happened and the world shut down. And as an actor, you. I love the hustle. I love going to auditions. I love working on set. I love making and creating. And and I and I. And I hate missing opportunities because I love my work so much. But when the world shut down, there was no more opportunities. And there was almost for me, there was just a little bit of a sigh of going, Okay, I can relax.
Relax for a little bit. I don’t have to hustle. I can just kind of chill. I’m not missing anything because no one else is doing anything. But there was something about when my good friend Rick Dugdale, who directed the film and produced it, and I worked with him on a film called Black Way with Anthony Hopkins and Ray Liotta. And we became friends again because I met him before that, ten years before, and he just called out of the blue and he was just like, Listen, we were supposed to go to Europe to do this film. My whole team pandemic hit, the lockdown hit.
We can’t travel, but we still want to stay creative. And we’re thinking about a project you want to be involved. And immediately before we even finished the sentence, I said, yes, I definitely want to be involved. And Cam Cannon came up with a script in ten days. And this script basically it’s called Zero Contact, which is perfect for a pandemic because there is zero contact, but it has nothing to do with the pandemic. And that’s what I love. But I didn’t want to do a pandemic movie and I know people that have done them and I think they’ve turned out great. And I just knew that there was a lot of storylines that were going to be about the pandemic, and this was not a pandemic movie. And Cam Cameron and Rick Perry created the story and Cam wrote the script in ten days. And I honestly was like, this is an amazing script for only ten days. There’s scripts that are out there that we’ve been working on for months or years. So I was like, not only was I excited about that, I was excited for the character that they wanted me to play.
I usually play like big guy roles. This had nothing to do with being a big guy. This had to do with being tech. And there was no physicality except mostly in front of my mind, my laptop. So I love that idea and that challenge to challenge my acting skills and to be busy during the film. So my experience when it was brought to me was just something of pure excitement. And the idea of the script to be shot in 17 different countries is where they actually did that. And Rick and the whole team had to travel all around doing zooms with all these actors. And I just thought it was an amazing experience to be a part of.
Criticólogos:
How much of the of the story you knew, how much of the script they gave you? In order to keep the mystery.
Aleks Paunovic:
Yeah. They gave us the whole script and it was a lot of talking points because it, it is a thriller and it kind of weaves in and out of timelines and stuff. So Rick really wanted us to know where the story was going and what was the nucleus of the story. What was what what what are we really trying to tell here? And I love that aspect of it. And the cross platform of telling stories and jamming on it a little bit with the other, with, with Rick.
Like I never got a chance to meet any of the other actors. I worked with two of the actors before and other things. But Chris Bruce Sure. Who plays Anthony Hopkins Son, does an amazing job in the film, and I watched a few of his YouTube videos, just even interviews, just to see what kind of a guy he was. And he’s a very bright actor and a subtle actor. So I knew that my character was bigger and kind of had a few of the jokes in and he was more it kind of solidified and but when we shot it, I don’t know if you knew this, but when we shot the film, I didn’t have him as an actor acting with me on Zoom.
I had I had our Addy somebody, a part of the crew that was just saying the lines to me. And I would act them, say the lines, I would act the next line. And and it’s a testament to Rick Dugdale who directed it for the three, his first time director, but who guided us in the peaks and valleys of the character and knew how we wanted to see it, which gave us a lot of life of creating the character. But it was his guidance through the film of not being able to see any of the other actors.
But then the editor, the editor should get an Academy Award because I mean, for him to put this together and the way he put it together and our sound department is just unbelievable. They did some amazing things in the sound department and the visual effects are great, but it literally the foundation of this was the script and us doing it in the format that we did it in Zoom that made it something really exciting to be a part of.
Criticólogos:
What from the character was you being yourself and what was you just, you know, just following the script and sticking to the story?
Aleks Paunovic:
Well, I think a lot of it was myself. I love the idea. You know, I kind of channeled my brother a little bit. My brother is a very, very, very bright man, very cerebral. I’m very emotional. I’m an emotional actor. And so channeling a little bit of my brother and his because he’s funny and witty, too. So but he’s he’s very smart. So I just really wanted to stick to who I am and do the character without any caricature aspects of it and just be real.
But also, it was fun for me to be, you know, playing a guy that’s a tech guy, somebody that that’s very smart with computers. So that was fun for me to do. And so the idea of playing a character like this, but also having my it being through the channel of myself without making a character, was something that was exciting.
Criticólogos:
What would you tell people to expect from this movie?
Aleks Paunovic:
I think one of the things they should effect is a very good story to me. I think the story is fantastic to follow through. You know, and also the idea of like this was shot during a pandemic. This is where we still want it to be creative. Just because the pandemic happened and everything was locked down, it doesn’t mean we have to stop being creative. So I love the fact that we stayed creative and we built a camp and Rick built a story that was believable and that could actually happen in the future because like I said in another interview, I mean, even in the seventies, no one thought a cell phone that we could actually be talking to each other like this would be happening in the seventies.
So who knows what it’s going to happen 30 or 40 years from now. We may be able to jump time. We may be able to quantum leap, who knows? And that to me is exciting that the possibility of it. And so I want people to go into this film knowing that this was done in the lowest the highest grade of circumstances of not being able to do a film, which we ended up doing this film. So the storyline and you know, it kind of moves into the second and third movie, which we’re going to be shooting.
So it’s going to become a trilogy, and that’s really exciting to me for this movie to come out May 27th in select theaters and VOD. That to me is so exciting. But I think what people will really wrap their heads around is where we flipped it on its head. All the first movie was all done in a Zoom format like this, and then second and third movie. We’re going all around the world to shoot in so many different locations, so it’s really exciting.
When I was doing my research for the interview, I find that it’s really yeah, I was like, I was so excited to say, Hey, wait, there’s so many possibilities. We can go with this. I mean, there are no limits because I think technology and we can do right now. You just said it. So I am with you. I’m excited. I can’t wait to do. And again, thank you for particularly retirement revelation when I’m on an amazing story and I’m missing something really unique. That’s the way I see it. It’s really unique. Thank you.
See the interview below:
