"I dream of making a zombie movie in Russia"
It is necessary to compete with the strongest, so the Russian film industry needs Hollywood content in movies, says producer Alexander Andryushchenko, known for the films "One Hundred years Ahead", "Lord of the Wind" and "Vasily". His new project is the fairy tale "Pinocchio", which will be released on January 1, 2026. In an exclusive interview with Izvestia at the New Movement festival in Veliky Novgorod, he spoke about the filming of the film in the scenery of an Italian town, Rybnikov's music, without which history is impossible, as well as about his dreams of making a horror about zombies in Russia and a simple melodrama that would tear apart a box office.
"Igor Voloshin turned into a Russian Disney"
— The theme of the New Movement festival is young cinema, debuts. But here, as an example of such a "young" Igor Voloshin's name often sounds, although he is not a debutant at all, he just came from the author's cinema to the mainstream. I shot "The Wizard of Oz", and his "Pinocchio" will be released soon. So Voloshin is really our young cinema, in fact?
— For me, the choice of Igor Voloshin is a very personal story. I've known him for eighteen years, since his debut. For me, he was always, first of all, just a friend. Secondly, a director whose auteur films I love very much. His path to a more widely reviewed format was difficult. He tried some movies, TV series, went there. We have been trying to find points of cooperation for many years, developing in parallel, and all this time we believed that Igor was able to work with a much wider audience.
Then we had the movie "Lord of the Wind", and our producer Antonina Lee came up with the idea that this was the very project that could finally be offered to Igor. He is a deeply religious, Orthodox man, and this topic is not an outsider to him, as it is to us. And on this basis, we went to Fyodor Konyukhov, we needed his consent, and the director also had to understand what we were going to tell. Igor and I have been waiting for this union for a very long time. Fifteen years passed before we made "Lord of the Wind" together, and it became, as it seems to us, his breakthrough project in large-format cinema. Well, then he started shooting "The Wizard of Oz", now "Pinocchio" and turned, as we joke, into a Russian Disney (laughs).
— Pinocchio is a brand, and comparisons of the future film with the Soviet one are inevitable. He has a Russian air about him. And the filming of your film took place in the Moskino Film Park, where an entire Italian town was built. Why did you decide to bet on this?
— We are telling a story that people know, so we are looking for a new incarnation, a new film language, a new solution. First of all, Pinocchio is no longer a boy in makeup, but a real wooden man, and this is one of the main innovations. The original Soviet film was rather conventional in its sets, makeup, costumes, fantastic characters, and so on. We are trying to reduce this measure of conditionality in this. We accept that the Italian characters speak Russian, but in fact they live in Italy, in some Mediterranean town, and have Italian names, so there must be an appropriate texture.
— At the same time, Rybnikov's music is preserved.
— Of course, she didn't become Italian (laughs). Music is generally the foundation. I would not have taken up the story of Pinocchio as a producer if Alexey Lvovich Rybnikov and his works had not been with us. We've been talking about this since the beginning. We all know that Pinocchio is an interpretation of Pinocchio. So for me, "Pinocchio" differs from "Pinocchio" primarily by Rybnikov's music. Fans of Tolstoy's book will forgive me, but for me, as a person who watched movies and grew up listening to the songs that sound there, it does not become outdated or less relevant, so, of course, it should be in the film. This is the emotional basis of this story.
"My dream is to make a very simple melodrama and break up the box office"
— Speaking of large-format cinema. Now family fantasies and fairy tales occupy a large place in this clearing. What is the domestic industry's plan B when they arrive?
— It's hard for me to speak for the entire industry. I can speak for our group of companies — "Hydrogen", Art Pictures, for our direction. We have a lot of multi-format films under development. Of course, there are also fairy tales. And, of course, we all feel that this line is not eternal. We have a Pinocchio 2 project in our development. We are writing it and waiting for the rental results. We will, of course, continue the franchise if everything happens the way we planned. But we have other directions. For example, historical movies, adventure-historical. There are other, as it seems to us, more original formats of fairy tales, I would say. We're writing "Swan Lake". We have a successful line of fantasy films, and we are going to continue it. It is very different from the format of fairy tales. It's also a great adventure movie, but it speaks to a slightly different audience, in a different, more complex language. For me, this is a personal outlet, as you know. We're going to shoot "Funny Guy U" and continue this universe (we're talking about the hero of "One Hundred years ahead." And, of course, we dream of making a great horror movie. We have ideas, we are writing these developments, we have a lot of projects. My dream is to make a zombie movie in Russia (smiles).
A shot from the movie "Sputnik"
— By the way, five years ago you released Sputnik, a really successful horror film. Why did you stop working with this genre?
— First of all, we don't know exactly how successful it was. Sputnik was released in limited release, as we remember, there was a pandemic. He was successful on streaming, he was successful abroad, he pushed his career, the remake rights were sold to a big company, and so on. That's a fact. But we don't know how he would have behaved in a wide box office. Well, it's just a risky genre. Unfortunately, we are risking a lot of money. We will do it, but we need some very confident scenario. We also have them in development, but we will wait in the wings and do something outstanding, I hope (laughs).
For now, it's a matter of financing, business models, and so on. Movies are becoming more expensive, unfortunately, the risks are increasing. And fairy tales are such a balanced genre now. Well, it's okay, it will change to some other one. As usual, someone will break through something, shoot another cool sports drama, everyone will rush there, for example. We will keep an eye on the market.
A shot from the movie "Basil"
— And if we talk about cross-cultural projects, you recently had a great example — the comedy "Vasily", which was filmed in Russia and Mexico. Are there any plans for such an expedition?
— Yes, we have everything in our plans. We don't limit ourselves to genres. Our approach to development is different. Any talented idea is first nurtured, nurtured, and we look at where it grows in any genre, in any format. When we already have some kind of application, a formulated idea, and a presentation, a decision is made on who is willing to invest how much money and how much risk to make such a project. I think that's the right thing to do: bide your time. Everything will be fine, there are just a lot of factors that are difficult to predict. My dream is to make a very simple melodrama and tear up the box office. Supermodrama. Just a love story. And everything. No special effects.
"We should not turn a blind eye to Hollywood cinema"
— There is a global film distribution crisis in the world. How would you formulate what problems there are in the industry today and whether they exist?
— I can formulate them romantically, or I can formulate them cynically. Romantically, there's no problem, you just need some kind of outstanding movie. An outstanding movie or an outstanding TV series will break through the asphalt. I firmly believe in this. This is an idea that I follow as an author, as a screenwriter, as a director, as a producer. That's why I'm in this profession. I couldn't have done it any other way.
A shot from the movie "Basil"
Probably, like any romantic idea, it is not completely true. The problems are basically the same. The audience is changing. I'm an adherent of the idea that the lack of serious competition with big Hollywood productions is not good for us. It works locally for the benefit of some releases, but in terms of quality, I think we're going down. We need to compete with the strongest, not eliminate the competition. Maybe we can come up with some kind of hybrid system, okay. The ticket price that jumps. It seems to keep cinemas afloat, but at the same time it definitely limits the audience, makes it smaller and smaller, scares away the streaming audience in many ways.
Well, there are risks that we must take on ourselves or jointly with some funds, with the state. I'm referring now to rocking other dates. In other words, we released the film "One Hundred Years Ahead" in April and collected 1.5 billion rubles at the box office. Now, maybe the industry will grin, but we still understand that if this was a New Year's release, we probably would have earned more. But we got there, and that date was rocked. Not the first ones. And praise be to the other producers, our partners, and everyone else who puts and continues to rock these dates. We see that a good movie is coming out and collecting. Summer needs to be rocked, other dates need to be rocked. It's scary, risky, and we need to do it all together — somehow consolidate the industry in making good movies in the first place (smiles).
— If Hollywood suddenly returns, will Russian cinema still face problems?
— I think that Russian cinema will face competition. And further, if we make a good movie, it will survive and become stronger. I think the truth is in some kind of hybrid rental system, semi—Chinese or some other, where the market, of course, is protected and regulated, but Hollywood cinema also exists. We must not turn a blind eye to him. That's my opinion.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
