The character is 71-years-old, has been enjoyed by generations of fans, and helped launch a Bruce Lee phenomenon that would forever change Hollywood. Not to be overshadowed, Seth Rogen believes his controversial appointment as writer/star of the upcoming “Green Hornet” movie has already made its own unique impact on pop culture.
“Yeah, that pissed off the nerds huh?,” he grinned recently, punctuating the point with his staccato laugh. “It’s my only goal, to piss off nerds.”
But then, getting as serious as the “Knocked Up” funnyman ever gets about anything, Rogen said he and writing partner Evan Goldberg begin writing the script this week. “We’re really going to sit down and get into it,” he insisted. “We made ‘Pineapple Express’, which is an action-comedy, but the action is the thing that stood out to the people we’ve shown the movie to so far - and my favorite types of movies are action/adventure movies, so that’s what we’re trying to do. We really want to make it an awesome action movie.”
Insisting that a crimefighting newspaper editor and his hard-kicking valet is the most Judd Apatow-esque of all superheroes, Rogen wanted to assure the PO’d nerds that the storyline is right in their wheelhouse. “We write movies based on relationships, and that’s what drew us to ‘The Green Hornet’,” he said. “It’s about these two guys who fight crime together…it’s the only really quote-unquote ’superhero-type movie’ that is about that…Batman would still be Batman without Robin, but Green Hornet would probably be useless without Kato.”
Naturally, talk then turned to the casting of Bruce Lee’s onetime role, and Rogen can’t say whether he’ll be looking for a young Jet Li or a Jackie Chan. “We really don’t know yet,” he shrugged. “Until we write the actual movie, we really don’t know how they’re going to turn out until we’re done. We leave a lot of room for the creative process.”
Unable to pass up the temptation, however, the funnyman looked over at his “Superbad” co-star Christopher “McLovin’” Mintz-Plasse and decided to screw with the nerds a little more. “He’s Kato,” Rogen added with a laugh.
