ComingSoon.net's horror arm ShockTillYouDrop.com visited the Shreveport, Louisiana set for Summit Entertainment's Drive Angry 3D , starring Nicolas Cage, William Fichtner, Amber Heard, Billy Burke, Simona Williams and Katy Mixon. Directed by Patrick Lussier, the horror action film is scheduled to hit theaters on February 11. In the film, a vengeful father hunts down the people who brutally killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby.

Back in April I interviewed Nicolas Cage about Sorcerer's Apprentice but also asked him about Ghost Rider 2 and another movie he was shooting called Drive Angry. Not much was known about the movie and Nicolas spilled his guts on the entire story exclusively to Latinoreview. I didn't think it was a big deal back then. I thought perhaps the plot had been released and I missed it since I was working WonderCon, but we were told things that nobody was supposed to know yet – like how Nicolas plays a father sent from Hell to go after the people ( led by Billy Burke) who murdered his daughter and kidnapped her baby. William Fichtner plays The Accountant, an agent from Hell who is also after cage. Amber Heard plays Piper, who joins Cage on his mission of revenge. Did I mention this is all being shot in 3D? Those details from Cage still managed to stay under the online radar somehow. I'm not sure if any websites even reported what he told us, but like he said, Drive Angry is a movie about vengeance and I had a chance to go to the set and see for myself what it was all about. A movie with Nic Cage playing the undead that has violence and car chases? I'd like one ticket, please. Myself and a few other journos traveled down south to the beautiful state of Louisiana to check out Nic Cage in action for Drive Angry. We traveled to a convention center area complete with a stadium where they were filming. After sitting inside and conducting a bunch of interviews with guys like writer Todd Farmer and producer Mike De Luca we finally headed off to one of the sets. This was a night shoot which kind of made things extra cool. We wandered past a bunch of blown up movie cars inside a set made to look like an abandoned prison yard. Graffiti of devils, pentagrams and skulls littered the walls. This was, I believe, the base for our main group of villains led by antagonist Billy Burke. The place wasn't very well kept for a bunch of evil bad guys. Lots of weeds and brush everywhere. Looked like it could use a good vacuuming. Also on the wall were black and white images of Billy's face which was a nice little touch if they include a quick shot of it in the movie. “MBV” was also painted on the wall. Nic manages to get into the prison by crashing his Chevelle through one of the prison walls causing an RV to explode. There were a lot of small trees on fire and this set the mood for the scene we were about to watch. But first let's catch up with Nicolas Cage and read what he has to say about the movie: We heard you jumped right into this project when you got pitched the script and everything. Cage: Yeah, well I read the script and they said that…when I read it my eye was going to be shot out and I remember on a movie called “Season of the Witch” I wanted them to shoot my eye out with an arrow. And the producers didn’t go for that, so when it was handed to me in this movie that they were going to shoot my eye out with a gun I thought, "yeah I’m going to make that movie." Can you talk a little bit about…it’s a hard R movie. There’s a lot of violence. Is that something that attracted you to the role or was it something…did it make you a little nervous? Cage: Well I do tend to apply myself to projects that make me uncomfortable because usually when that happens I try to find a way of existing in the project that is more creative. So that I can do something with the material that compels me to go in a new direction. I had been making a lot of family oriented movies, which I also like. But I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies and I felt that this was as good a chance to make a midnight movie as any, so that’s why I jumped in. What’s the most uncomfortable thing about this character? Cage: Well, there’s the level of killing. You know, he’s not really a…it’s more like a force from another dimension. It’s almost like karma on some level. It’s not really a…it’s almost more than human like a ghost on a vengent tear. Like karma. I see him as a protector of children when something horrific is about to happen to children, he is awakened from the abyss and I like characters that have supernatural aspects to them because I feel like you can do more with them. There’s an infinite number of possibilities when you’re dealing with the infinite. There’s a lot of references to 70’s car movies, chase movies. Is there a character based reference for you that you go back to at all? Cage: Well I tried to instill as much of those memories that I had from the 70’s films with Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. And there were a couple of moves that Charles Bronson had like in Death Wish that I was trying to bring back for this. And then you have the element of the automobile as well. There’s so many different sides to this one because it is a car movie but it also has the action of an old Charles Bronson movie and then you add the supernatural component to it and on top of that you have 3D, so it’s not like anything else that I’ve done before or really seen before. I’m very excited about what can emerge from this. I’m trying to mess with the format - meaning like what can I do with 3D as a film actor. How can I move differently or I was talking about sticking my tongue out and seeing it would go into the 4th row of the audience and if there’s anything I can do to play with the format. Do you watch the dailies? Cage: No. I don’t. I look at playback on-set and I put the 3D glasses on and if I feel like we have it then we move on. Once it’s gone to dailies after work, I don’t think there’s really anything you can do about it. You know? It’s too late. So with the invention of video playback you can get a lot done very quickly and you can make any adjustments that need to be made while you’re filming it. When you have a character who’s motivated by revenge, are you like non-stop angry or do you have a moment to catch your breath and think things out? Cage: Yeah, you know Milton to me…I’ll talk very little about it because I want you to have your own relationship with it, so it’s like if you see him as being angry so be it. But I think it’s almost like he doesn’t really fit into the physics of normal human emotion. I would think a little more like High Plains Drifter that way where you’re not exactly sure where he’s at. It’s not just straight-up anger so much. He’s coming from another dimension that’s not of this earth. Well, Billy was saying that pretty much everyone in this movie is kind of a bad guy. You know, Billy’s just the worst bad guy. Is that how you see it as well? Cage: Well, he’s…yeah, I mean he’s certainly the worst bad guy in terms of people. But what William Fichtner’s going on is also deliciously bad but it’s a different kind of bad. It’s more like from when I’m watching him it’s like an imp that’s been released or a leprechaun or something. He’ll describe it in his own way but…and then Milton, to me, is certainly villainous but, again, he doesn’t fit into normal human behavior or emotion. It’s more like a ghost, you know? But he does build relationships like with Amber’s character. Cage: Yeah. You guys have a relationship. Cage: Yeah. But even that relationship is a little bit mysterious. She’s chosen for a certain very specific reason that I don’t know if I want to give away, but he chose her and the relationship isn’t a romantic one at all. It’s more of like a partnership. There’s a lot of classic cars in this and we’ve heard that you do a lot of your own driving. Was that something that you almost wanted to put in your contract like I want to do this kind of driving or… Cage: No, well I worked with Johnny Martin before on Gone in 60 Seconds so he knew what I was capable of doing and he was very comfortable with me driving in the cars and so it was just a natural flow that happened and it didn’t take a lot of thought or a lot of rehearsing. You mentioned briefly about the 3D element of the movie. Now as an actor, you said it makes you think a little bit differently. But do you find it at all invasive or intrusive to the normal acting process? Cage: No. On the contrary I find it inspiring and I always think when I’m working on something new, whether it’s a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera anything new, in this case certainly the 3D is one of the new elements, but it is exciting for me because again, it gets my creative wheels spinning. Like what can I do with that? How can I play with that format? And certainly the first thing I did when I arrived on the set on the first day was just I really wanted to look at the camera and see was there something different about it. Was there something…how was I going to make friends with this camera? What information was it going to receive from me and how would I move differently? And I found very quickly that it’s just not much different that a normal 35mm camera or whatever the millimeter is on this, but it just…some moves can make an impact. Some moves can make a difference and if you think about it and I’ll discuss it with Patrick how can I get into the audience with my body language. We’ll go over it, rehearse it and then shoot it. And then sometimes there’s happy accidents. Like we did this one shot where I was cocking the shotgun and the shell just happened to fly out into the lens of the camera in such a way that it was magical for the 3D format. But of course that wasn’t rehearsed at all. So it’s always exciting when you can go into a mode where you can be both spontaneous and choreographed. Sort of in control and out of control at the same time. Do you have to exaggerate some motions? Cage: Well that’s what I was thinking when I was trying to stick my tongue out into the audience. I was really trying to exaggerate it, but I don’t know if they’re going to go with that or not. Might be a little too much too soon. Can you talk about your reaction to the gun? We saw the gun and it looks pretty…. [Sorry, spoilers! -Ed.] Alright, back to the scene they were shooting. Nic is lying on the ground and appears badly hurt. Billy, using a big bone as a cane, is limping towards him. Billy starts beating Nic on his back as he's crawling away. Billy then points off camera and yells, “Bring me the f*cking baby!”. Cage then rolls over and...well, you'll just have to wait until later to find out what happens then! They had to keep reshooting the scene because a train was going by every five minutes. And that was about it. We then walked over to where they were keeping a few of the muscle cars to be used in the film like the Chevelle and a few others. Talked with Johnny Martin about which car was the fastest, how they modified them so they'd look cooler in 3D. He fired a couple of them up and nothing smells sweeter than gasoline being wasted in a 400hp engine when you rev it. It was a really fun set visit. I haven't been to many set visits that take place at night and with the wind blowing and the dust everywhere the scene we saw being shot looks like it'll be pretty cool on screen. Look for some Drive Angry footage this Friday in Hall H from 10:30 – 11:30 at Comic-Con. And of course, Latinoreview will be there to cover it all. Thanks to Summit for the great time!Source: Latinoreview

Summit Entertainment’s THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN will be filmed in both Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Vancouver over the next year starting this fall.  The next chapter of THE TWILIGHT SAGA will be released as two separate films with the first of the two slated to be released in theatres on November 18, 2011. Academy Award® winner Bill Condon will direct both films starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner along with Billy Burke as Charlie Swan as well as returning members of the Cullen Family including Peter Facinelli as Carlisle, Elizabeth Reaser as Esme, Jackson Rathbone as Jasper, Nikki Reed as Rosalie, Ashley Greene as Alice and Kellan Lutz as Emmett. The project, based on the fourth novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, is currently being written by Melissa Rosenberg with Wyck Godfrey, Karen Rosenfelt and Stephenie Meyer producing. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions. The third film in the franchise, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, is currently in theatres.Source: Summit Entertainment

The over protective Charlie Swan actor Billy Burke dishes to HollywoodLife.com on why the on-screen chemistry works so well with K-Stew!

Two years and three movies later, we’ve noticed that the father-daughter relationship between Billy Burke and Kristen Stewart is so good, it feels real. What’s the secret? “That is a part of the movie magic,” Billy Burke, 43 told HollywoodLife.com exclusively about his relationship with the 20-year-old starlet. “I’m not going to say it is a secret but what I will say is, Kristen and I, first of all our relationship was what attracted me to do these movies in the first place.Read more

The Ministry has previously highlighted the struggles of "The Twilight Saga's" ordinary humans, and perhaps the most popular is Kristen Stewart's on-screen dad, Billy Burke. It's arguable that some of Stewart's most comedic and relatable moments come from her scene work with Burke, as bone-dry rural police chief Charlie Swan. In our chat a while back with "Twilight" screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, the scribe said Burke's character was her favorite to write for. Our Q&A with Burke provides more insight. Ministry of Gossip: So this is the third time around playing Bella's dad. Are you and Kristen on autopilot at this...

Peter Facinelli joined his Eclipse costars Jackson Rathbone and Billy Burke last night for a meet-and-greet at LA's Nokia Plaza, where fans have been camping out for up to four days to catch a glimpse of their favorite Twilight stars. Jackson, in particular, has been extra busy over the past few weeks as he also promotes his film The Last Airbender with animal-friendly photo ops. Peter and the gang will be back at the same place tonight for the US premiere, joining Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner on the red carpet - stay tuned to Pop and our Twitter for updates from the scene!