After introducing himself to North American moviegoers with his mesmerizing fantasy thriller Night Watch and its sequel Day Watch, Russian director Timur Bekmambetov has taken a turn into the action genre to helm the graphic novel-to-film project Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, and Morgan Freeman. While Night Watch and Day Watch focused on the clash between the fantastical forces of darkness and daylight, Wanted delves into the territory between heroism and vengeance as a sexy, gun-toting ass-kicker named Fox helps a go-nowhere slacker unlock his dormant powers to execute justice.

As Wanted inches closer to its theatrical release on June 27, we caught up with director Timur Bekmambetov at the film's press junket to get the goods on making the transition from the Night Watch movies to action-thriller, meeting Angelina Jolie for the first time, casting such high profile stars, and the mythology surrounding the film's firepower and the art of bending bullets.

Timur Bekmambetov on directing two A-list stars like Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman:

"It’s a pleasure. I was lucky to have them in the movie. And they’re very different, but very talented and very focused with a lot of responsibility. Both of them feel the responsibility with every word they will say. Every shot we will make together will be commented on and you will ask me questions. For example, with Angelina it was very important to create the character because she played an assassin, she played a woman killing people, and it was very important for her to make a character with responsibility and she never killed innocent people in the movie. Everything she did had a purpose and there were rules and the goal was to protect the world. She was a soldier. And it was very important for her to make a character that’s not just fun and entertaining, there are serious reasons, and the same with Morgan. It was very interesting to work with them because they’re very creative. There were a lot of ideas [that] appeared right on the stage and they gave me a lot of great ideas and it was very helpful for me because I’m not an American director. I can understand almost everything, but sometimes I cannot and they helped me a lot to figure out what is real and what’s not for American audiences."

Bekmambetov on why he picked James McAvoy to be in the movie:

"I picked him because I saw him in a movie called Inside I'm Dancing. It’s an English movie he made a few years ago before he became a famous actor and this movie tells me he’s the only actor I want to work with on this movie. The story of his character, he plays a paralyzed young boy, paralyzed in a wheelchair, and he can only move his eyes. All of the girls around him fall in love with him and he became a leader in the place where he lived. And he was very delightful and very positive and very sarcastic, ironic, and he was exactly the person who is Wesley in the movie. But that was exactly what I needed, because Wesley is also paralyzed in the beginning of the movie. He isn’t paralyzed physically, but he’s paralyzed emotionally and it was reference - the key for the whole project for me, his character in the movie, Inside I'm Dancing."

On who some of his favorite comic book super heroes were:

"Plastic Man. It’s from '50s, '60s, '50s. The man who can stretch his legs and hands."

On why Wanted was a natural progression for him:

"We use a unique technique to make this movie. All of the action scenes were - the studio gave me a chance to do this. In Russia I had a team of CG artists and animators and we made a pre-visualization. We made all action scenes as a pre-vis, as animatics first, with characters, animation, camera angles, the visual effects, the sound, music, and it was almost thirty minutes of the movie. And then we used this video - I mean this movie. It was movie - we used it and inserted it into the script. The script was made, the action scenes were made off of the pre-vis, do you know what I had a possibility to sit in my office in Moscow with all of these scenes - train, bridge, and gorges and characters inside - and I made a movie first, the action scenes. What I imagined was prevised and I cut it and made a movie and then we sent it to writers and then they used it as their template and they just put it in the script. I think it’s a unique way because now it’s possible with new technology. It’s possible to make a movie more organically because I can not imagine how writers write this on the paper, like between the two gorges the train stops - It’s difficult to imagine what this means and difficult to make a decision on how to make it. But with this new technique we used pre-vis as a tool to write the script. It’s unique."

Bekmambetov on the film’s demographic:

"It’s from sixteen years old to sixty, everything, because we have a story about the father and son and I think it will be interesting for young people and for old. Also, I think the audience for this movie are people spending eight hours a day, five days a week, all of their life in offices. That means everybody, everybody can identify with Wesley Gibson."

On his directing style:

"I like calibration. It’s absurd to have personalities next to you with ideas, with wishes, and to dictate to them what to do. I think it’s calibration. My business is to pick these people and to surround myself with good people and smart people. If it happens, then you have to enjoy working with them, to share with them ideas."

On meeting Angelina Jolie for the first time:

"The first time I met her was when I flew to New Orleans to present her with the project and to pitch her and to try to engage. I remember my feelings - it was like in a minute it felt like we knew each other for many years, immediately. There was no political and there was no dancing around, there was just right away we just cut to the subject, why we met each other. What can we do together? How can we make it unusual and unique and impressive and very interesting for us to make? It was very practical and entertaining and charming. She’s a very charming person."

On having Common in the movie:

"There was a moment I understood we don’t have any actor who grew up in Chicago. You know, he’s a real Chicago boy and it was important to have him because he helps to make this movie look real. Also, he’s an interesting - everybody in the movie, they’re very interesting personalities and he’s good too because he’s a great singer. It was important for me to have bright people around, because I’m not an American I don’t really feel things. I can imagine and it was important to have the right people around and I will just trust them and he was one of them that I trusted."

Bekmambetov on Wanted becoming a franchise:

"There were discussions about it and I think it’ll happen, but I don’t know yet. We have a lot of possibilities to resurrect these people because - for example, we have in the mythology in the movie, we have a recovery room and we can heal them all. But I don’t know what this means. I think the audience will tell us what we will do."

Timur Bekmambetov on the weaponry and bending bullets:

"We developed this mythology very carefully and we had a book abut the rules, how a bullet flies and how to curve bullets. The idea was, because it’s an ancient fraternity, an ancient community, and they had a lot of experience and they developed their tools, too. Also, we decided from the beginning that we will stay in a low-tech world, without a lot of lasers and gadgets. It was low-tech because they’re kind of classical and conservative people. They didn’t kill a lot. They killed very specific people and they don’t need a more destructive weapon. The idea was that the bullet - The guns are unrifled. There’s no rifling in the guns and in this case the bullet is a little bit looser. And when you move like in a soccer game and be the ball, it can fly and rotate and turn. It’s the same technique with the bullet. If you turn your hand fast enough to catch a moment when your barrel will spin the bullet, if it’s an unrifled barrel then the bullet is not rotating, then you have a chance to find the moment, which is a milli-millisecond when you can bend the bullet and it will fly and curve and fly around. But your hand has to be fast enough, faster than the speed of the bullet. But they can do it, you will see in the movie.