Bullet To the Head: Stallone Convinced Warner Bros. To Hire Walter Hill

During a two-part video interview released earlier today, Bullet to the Head star Sylvester Stallone said that he convinced Warner Bros. to try director Walter Hill to replace Wayne Kramer when the Crossing Over director left the project.”It was a relief” to finally work with Hill after a number of false starts, Stallone said. “It was unexpected; I thought we were going to do 48 Hours and other projects that I should have done but I didn’t. And this film started to, I guess, fall into the valley of troble. I thought, ‘My God, it’s not going to go. It’s going down in flames.’ The other director just didn’t work out; it was becoming way too technical and visual and visual, I wanted old school. I thought, ‘Walter Hill,’ and they said, ‘No, he hasn’t worked in a while.’ I said, ‘Neither did I for eleven years. Neither did Travolta. Don’t start on me–the guy’s good. he had the meeting and it just brought out Walter’s chops again. And we had to do this on a tight budget, so I think what he got on film is something very entertaining–kind of a retro flashback with modern-day technology, and he got his wings back. It felt good.”Stallone went on to say that Hill reminds him of John Huston, the iconic actor/director who helmed Victory, a 1981 film starring Stallone and The Dark Knight Trilogy’s Michael Caine.”[Hill] is extremely calm; I don’t have that gear. I don’t have the calm gear, he does,” Stallone said, saying that when the movie wrapped production he wasn’t even sure about it until checking with the director.