Back in March, a number of members of the cast of the upcoming box office film Much Ado About Nothing as well as writer, producer and director Joss Whedon made an appearance at this year’s Wonder Con held in Anaheim, California.
The participants in the panel included cast members Clark Gregg (The Avengers), Sean Maher (Firefly), Tom Lenk (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Romy Rosemont (Glee), Riki Lindhome (Million Dollar Baby), Spencer Treat Clark (The Last House on the Left) and newcomers Jillian Morgese, Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney as well as Whedon and cinematographer Jay Hunter.
Much Ado About Nothing, of course, is based on the legendary comedic play written by William Shakespeare that chronicles two pairs of lovers: Benedick and Beatrice (the main couple) and Claudio and Hero (the secondary couple).
In the Whedon version, the play is set in modern times but filmed in black and white using the original play as dialogue. The movie was filmed at Whedon’s home in Los Angeles over the course of 12 days in mid-October of 2011 on an extremely small budget.
Missing from the panel that day were lead actors Amy Acker (Angel and Person of Interest), who plays Beatrice and Alexis Denisof (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel), who plays Benedick as well as Fran Kranz (Dollhouse), who plays Claudio, Nathan Fillion (Firefly and Castle), who plays Dogberry and Reed Diamond (Franklin & Bash), who plays Don Pedro.
During the panel, the audience was treated to three different scenes from the film with Whedon talking about what made him do the project, sharing that “everything (was) in place (and I) understood the characters and (I) had to do it” while each of the cast members talked about getting the call from Whedon regarding the project and the characters each of them played. Whedon also shared that he “would like to take this complete cast and do something new and very different” in the future.
A few behind the scenes details that the cast provided were that they would get eight pages of the script done each day, that some of the cast needed help translating what they were filming (after all Shakespeare isn’t the easiest to understand), that, ironically, Whedon had done some test reading about 10 years ago and that the cast took a 30-hour bus ride together to go to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
Much Ado About Nothing will open in theatres on Friday, June 7. You can check out the trailer for the film right here.
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