Looking ahead, do you have a start date for McClane yet?

I wish, not yet. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. It’s really up to them because obviously now they’re owned by Disney. My sense is that we won’t know much about it for a while while they debate whatever they’re debating. I don’t know enough about their plans really to have any point of view. They like our script.

When does Snake Eyes start?

We probably start late summer, early fall.

Are you going to be able to keep him silent as the star of a film?

[LAUGHS] I’m not going to spoil that one. I will say this. Part of the opportunity of going back is to discover who is this guy. For me, I’m most interested in seeing it as an origin story. If you see it as an origin story, you do get to see him speak for X period of time.

For the next Transformers are you looking for new directors or hoping you can still make Michael Bay an offer?

I think Bay has made it really clear that he loved what he did and he’s not doing anymore. So I think the answer is we’re writing a script. At that point, once we get script we have a strong belief in, then we’ll begin to debate that. Michael’s made it really clear that he didn’t want to do it. I don’t blame him. He spent a hell of a lot, a decade of his life, shooting them.

Are you developing a script that picks up where The Last Knight left off?

No.

Is The Meg sequel on a fast track?

I have not read the script that’s being worked on, but it is being worked on. Every producer probably thinks their projects should be on the fast track so I’ll be the same as everybody else. I hope so. You know what’s interesting to me, something I get really mad at about Hollywood is how many times studios do really, I’ll say, safe [projects]. What was interesting to me about Meg was from the get go, one of the things I said to Warners was, “I look forward to doing this movie but we have to do it where we never take ourselves too seriously.” Because it’s a giant shark movie. To a point, it’s almost pretentious if you try to take yourself too seriously and they bought into that from the get go. That’s not the easiest decision to go along with. What I’ve liked recently and I’m noticing a creative, I’ll say, opening I guess where just as the studio let us make arguably the darkest movie you could make of Pet Sematary. That may not have happened a lot over the last few years. It feels to me, I don’t know why, I wish I did, but the good news is it feels like that’s what’s happening.

Would a Meg sequel be based on any of the other books?

I think a little bit and I’m going to reserve comment because until I read it, I don’t want to send people off in the wrong direction.

Were there any new takes on The Matrix that were surprising to you?

I always find it interesting how people view things. It’s not even really right or wrong. It’s just it goes through their own impressions. One of the things they’ll say is, “How did they get it through Warner Brothers?” The answer is we fought for five and a half years to get it made. So the idea that they came up with some magic formula is not nearly accurate but I understand why somebody’s looking to try to figure out why it got made.

For me, my entry to The Matrix was the Hong Kong style martial arts which I was already watching in subtitled movies. I was excited to see that in an American movie and then those choreographers got to work in Hollywood for a few years.

It’s one of the reasons honestly why I wanted to do Snake Eyes so much was because I love Kung Fu. I love the moviemaking tradition that comes out of that. To me, it’s so much fun to try to get into that and then also try to figure out what is the new version of it? I’m a big believer in go do something. Yes, there’s a certain expectation of what you want from let’s call it a kung fu movie. It’s sort of a simple term but the truth is if we give you the version that you can visualize, we’ve probably given you something that you already know and therefore it’s kind of boring. So it becomes that balance. All right, how do you do new and appreciate and validate the old if you would? I find that one of the most interesting things about filmmaking. It’s something I learned over time that I think is really essential is really like okay, well, how do you? We could have really blown it with the ballsy choice with Ellie vs. Gage. But we went into it with the philosophy of the audience is very loyal to this. If we’re loyal to the spirit of the book and some large elements of the book, they’ll come with us. That was the theory. Could’ve been wrong, so I enjoy that part of it, the big roll of the dice.