The director Jay Roach once said that “sequels should be earned. [One] should never do one unless the script is better than the first one and the overall material is better than before.” In other words, a sequel must truly be earned and not merely exist as a means to make money. It is rare, in the independent film world at least, for sequels to even exist at all. When I tell most people that my first full length feature film is in fact a sequel to a short action film I directed last year, the reaction is almost always the same. Why? Why make a sequel to a film that less than a few hundred people saw? Why make a sequel when there are so many untold stories and ideas just waiting to be mined? The answer is simple-because the material earned it.
I always imagined the disk as being a story that couldn’t be told in just one film. The characters and ideas that had been introduced in the first film The Disk: Hard Target had become larger than that one film. In order for my fellow writers Alex Shirley, Alan Lamberg and I to do full justice to this story, we needed to expand the scope of the first film much further into the realm of our own current reality. The situations that arise in The Disk: Code Zero are more heavily based in the social and political environment that exists now in 2008. But perhaps more importantly, the characters have grown since their last outing and I am pleased to say that so too has the talent bringing them to life! It has been a great pleasure to see returning actors David Ginsburg, Alex Shirley, Rebecca Hatlelid, Ryan Ferris-Hanson, Kevin Grigoryan, Alan Lamberg and Ben Young grow more comfortable in the skins of each of their respective characters. And it has been just as gratifying to bring in so many new faces to the disk universe including Kyle “Epic” Mendoza (Agent Melain), John Prophete (Director Williams), Andrew Covey (Assistant Director Dheil), Brittany Johnson (Ares) and so many others.
On December 28, 2008 we will unveil the fruits of all of our labors for the past year. This is a production that has extended far beyond anything I could’ve expected when we were making Hard Target. It has spanned two cities- St. Louis (where most of our principle photography took place) and New York (for second unit photography) and incorporated the work and skills of some of the most talented individuals that I have ever met in both of those cities. Cameramen, stuntmen, musicians, actors and writers of the highest caliber were brought in to bring our vision of The Disk to life and in doing so I believe we have created a film that can stand up not only to it’s predecessor but also as it’s own stand alone film. And isn’t that ultimately the goal of any good sequel?