Months away from his 18th birthday, actor Josh Hutcherson has appeared in over 13 movies, which may be why it wasn’t too surprising when he was one of the names being bandied about to take over the role of Peter Parker A.K.A Spider-Man in Marc Webb’s Untitled Spider-Man Film. ComingSoon.net spoke to the young actor about Lisa Cholodenko’s beloved Sundance family dramedy The Kids Are All Right earlier today, and we made sure to ask him about some of these rumors.
Hutcherson did confirm that he had auditioned, adding what most everyone already knows about the casting process for Webb’s anticipated reboot: “I think a lot of people are auditioning and talking about it, so it’s an honor to be considered on the same list with some of these actors that I’m up against. It’s really cool. To be talked about in that kind of role is very awesome.”
“I really don’t know what’s going on with everything right now,” he told us when asked if he was still in the running. “It would be an honor to play that role, it’s a big thing, it’s a total game changer. I really want to play a comic book hero. I’m not really huge into comics, but I’ve always been big into superheroes from the cartoons and the movies that have been made about them.”
We kind of knew the answer but we had to Hutcherson if he had a chance to read any of the script before or during his audition, to which he replied, “No, they won’t let anybody read that. They have it in a safe inside a vault inside some secret Fort Knox location.”
Hutcherson also talked to us about the sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, currently called Journey to the Mysterious Island, in which Hutcherson takes more of a lead role now that Brendan Fraser has bowed out.
He gave us a brief plot synopsis: “We’re going to a mysterious island and the island is found by triangulating three different books, one by Jules Verne, one by Robert Louis Stevenson and one other book (Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”). I get this radio signal that is coming from this place in the middle of the South Pacific that there’s nothing mapped that exists there, then I look at these books and realize that it’s a mysterious island, so I head down there with… I think it’s going to be my stepdad… to check it out, and then crazy adventure ensues from there.”
“They’re still trying to find the right guy and they have a lot of interesting names,” he added about the actor who’ll play the new adult figure in the movie.
Hutcherson also stars in MGM’s upcoming remake of Red Dawn, which has been set for a November release for at least a year, but word of MGM’s financial woes has called that release date into question. “I don’t know when it’s coming out, but it was such an amazing shoot and the action is so good, but MGM is just making sure they have everything set and ready before they release it, which is good actually. They really care about this movie, which is nice to see, and they want to make sure they have all their ducks in a row before they just throw it out there. They want to make sure they have the right marketing campaign set up and everything.”
“It’s definitely more modern,” he said of the remake, which is following the current summer trend for ’80s remakes. “It has the same idea about a group of teens fighting against an entire army, which is hard and definitely fictional, but they have the same characters and the same heart that the original had. This time, the Chinese are invading instead of the Russians to modernize it a little bit, so yeah, it’s just a modernized version of the original.”
Look for our full interview with Josh (and the rest of the cast) before The Kids Are All Right opens in select cities on July 9.
