Warning: There are major spoilers in this video, so if you would like to be kept in the dark about what happens in the film, who Pet is, and what happens in the book, please come back to this video after you have seen the film.
On Saturday morning, we took part in a fan site roundtable interview with several of the actors, as well as Stephenie Meyer. In this portion of the interviews, we and the other fan sites were able to ask Stephenie a lot of questions about The Host.
Stephenie talks about the film-making process, how the films are affecting her writing, the casting of Pet/Wanderer, how being a producer on ‘The Host’ differed from her level of involvement on the ‘Twilight’ films, if ‘The Host’ will be as big as ‘Twilight’, the influence of family on her work, where she is in the process of producing “Anna Dressed in Blood”, the prank war, her new path as a producer (versus as an author), what she has to remember the film/set by, where Austenland is right now and when it is coming out, and Andrew Niccol’s meticulous directing-style.
There were a couple parts in the interview where Stephenie talked about characters and parts that might be important for the rest of the series, so I’ve transcribed them for you below if you’re interested:
“I think that there are some things that it’ll [the movie] affect. The fact that Sunny doesn’t appear in the story is going to have to be, because she’s a larger character, and so that’s somebody that is going to have to – we’re going to have to do something there. I mean, we’re lucky we got Burns in ‘cuz that was the very end, you know, and he’s also someone that – I think when they were originally doing it, they were looking at hiring someone who was very physically different, just a day player in Louisiana. I was like, ‘Oh, you might not wanna saddle yourself with them. I’m just saying’. Sometimes it’s hard to be like, ‘Just trust me on this one. Let’s go a little younger. Let’s not have him be 60. How’s that?”
This hints towards the importance of both Sunny and Burns in the upcoming books/movies, as well, which is very exciting. 🙂
“Sarah: Just one last question, I guess. From someone who hasn’t read the book and saw it last night, that’s actually Jordan [indicating our cameraman], he wanted to know how did the souls initially come to earth? How did they insert themselves into the first human, which is something I never thought about?
Stephenie: I mean, I think it’s a little bit in there. I think actually the opening – I get confused ‘cuz I’ve had the opening for the second book written for a very long time. That’s something I did in the early stages because I wasn’t always sure where I was going to put it. That goes into more detail with that. But they came with their spider bodies because those are really useful; they’re strong and they can handle a lot. And so they just had to get to a few people because once you have one, and one of the big cryotanks where they keep the babies, where there’s a million of them, it doesn’t take long. So it talks about, in the beginning of the next one, how they worked in. Like you find the preschool teacher – or probably not preschool, you’d want the high school teacher – of the kid of the secret service agent and, through that, you work into the President in four easy steps. Once you have the President and his people under, you start controlling the information, and you’re doing this in every country. And then I would invite Lori over for an afternoon lunch and she would say, “Oh, of course, I haven’t seen Stephenie in awhile”. And she would leave a different person, because it’d be that smooth. And you would go home, and your husband and kids and everybody that you know and all of your friends would then slowly – it wouldn’t take that long because it just works out exponentially. And it’s very quiet and no one knows what’s going on. You don’t lose your memories, there’s nothing to give you away. In the movie, the eyes are a little bit more obvious and so it would be easier. But in the books you have to have a direct light and even then it’s kind of just a reflection and it’s a little off, but it’s not so obvious that you’d be like, “There’s something different about you.” It would just be, “Hey, my neighbors are a lot nicer lately and everyone’s picking up their trash well.”
So now we know what’s coming for the opening of the second book and more details on how the invasion of earth happened – quick, yet quiet.
Source: The Host Movie News
