#Prince of persia cast professional
It may streak by on screen, but just know that professional Moroccan horse jockeys trained for weeks so they could ride the world’s largest birds, which can sprint up to 45 miles per hour.
#Prince of persia cast movie
(At least Newell didn’t have to wear goggles when he helmed the hocus-pocus fantasy “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the gritty mob movie “Donnie Brasco” or the charming dramedy “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”)įor “Prince of Persia,” the Cambridge-educated Newell also spent days “directing” 14 ornery ostriches for a wild medieval racing sequence. During filming of “Prince of Persia” - which boasts a cast and crew of nearly 1,400, including Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina and 800 local Moroccans - the versatile veteran British director and company battled brain-frying 130-degree heat, flash floods and blinding sandstorms. The way the lively 68-year-old Newell tells it, making the mega-budget Disney epic adventure was an insanely involved epic adventure in itself.
In the gruesome scene where one is sliced open, Newell says that on set he used a bicycle inner tube for the snake and chopped tuna for its guts). (Despite his haul, those scary vipers in “Prince of Persia” are computer generated images. The creepy crawler-catcher wore a T-shirt emblazoned “Snake Dude” as he collected Hollywood-unfriendly poisonous critters in glass jars before the day’s shoot and between takes. “His name was Snake Dude,” director Mike Newell says with genuine admiration. Or the happy-go-lucky Moroccan man whose daily job was to clear the expansive desert set of venomous scorpions and snakes. Try being the ostrich trainers who kept the hefty, temperamental, feathered actors from ripping out Gyllenhaal’s heart. and Jerry Bruckheimer Inc.)įrom left, Alfred Molina, Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton trudge through a dusty desert scene.Ĭhisel-chested Jake Gyllenhaal may look macho as the sword-fighting hero of “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” but he’s a wimp compared with some gutsy folks who worked behind the scenes when the film was shot in Morocco. Hassansin Whip Man (Thomas DuPont, left) battles sword-fighting hero Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) in “Prince of Persia.”ĭirector Mike Newell (center) on the Moroccan set for “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” (Andrew Cooper / Disney Enterprises Inc. Review: `Prince of Persia' slips from memory (May 26, 2010).