George Clooney describes his role in "TOMORROWLAND"

really interesting stuff. Again, they said George was their first choice just like how Brad Bird answered my question last month in Facebook Q&A when the trailer came out.
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I think the little girl who plays Athena will go a long way n this world..........

Hi sevens, can you in future copy and past your link? As you can see below the Website doesn't work anymore (at least for me). Your title of this thread sounds like George gave an interview about his role????? But then in your post you wrote "They said George was..."....So was George describing his role or somebody else????


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Nicky sorry I don't know why the site is down now. it was normal this morning. basically it contains the whole cast's interviews and some words from the director&writer. also some info about the largest set they built.
Guess we have to wait till it's back. I didn't have a copy of the content.sorry I was on my way out when posted this piece so didn't have time to copy

Now I've got the original content:
Walt Disney Studios has provided us with some additional details regarding the cast and sets of its upcoming film, Tomorrowland (May 22, 2015), some of which you can find summarized below.

According to co-writer Damon Lindelof, the main character of Frank Walker was always described as ‘George Clooney-esque.’ ‘Whenever we would talk about actors for Frank, the thinking was: who’s like Clooney?,’ recalls Lindelof. ‘We crossed our fingers and did our best job of writing it, infusing Frank with a curmudgeonly humor and a heroic quality, all of which we think George embodies. And then we sent it off into the universe.’



Luckily for them, it paid off. Clooney describes his character as a ‘disenchanted grump who was a bit of a dreamer as a young boy — a smart little scientist kid. Young Frank goes to a place that he thinks is the greatest in the universe and he believes the world is going to be much better off because of it. He finds out that those things were untrue and becomes probably the most cynical person one could be. He isolates himself on his family farm and plans to spend the rest of his life there but is forced to deal with his past because of situations that happen in the film.’



For the role of brilliant scientist David Nix, Hugh Laurie was approached for what the producers called the actor’s ‘astonishing intelligence; a little bit of danger undercut by a lot of fun.’ Laurie says he was ‘completely struck by the first conversation I had with Brad [Bird] and Damon about the morbid defeatism that has gripped the world. There are benefits beyond number to modern life but they don’t seem to bring us a feeling of satisfaction, triumph or accomplishment. Brad and Damon laid out this extraordinary vision of a future that ran completely counter to all popular ideas about how the world is going, and I was completely taken with it.’

Asked about how his character and Clooney’s character play off one another, Laurie says, ‘Frank’s idea was to create things that are fun, that make people’s lives better because they bring pleasure and joy, and express hope. Nix is only interested in the more utilitarian platform of research; life for him is an endless scientific quest because he believes that man was put on this Earth to accumulate and develop knowledge.’



Britt Robertson plays Casey Newton, the daughter of a NASA engineer (Tim McGraw) who is about to be laid off now that the space program has been all but shut down. Of Casey, Robertson says, ‘She’s this really smart chick who has always wanted to be an astronaut. It’s her passion and what she and her father have bonded over. Casey has this drive to do big things and change the world; she wants the world to be a place that’s full of hope and inspiration, but she doesn’t know how to make it so.’

Those who have seen the Japanese trailer for Tomorrowland already know that Raffey Cassidy’s character, Athena, has already identified Casey as ‘the one’ and she better be right. As Cassidy explains, ‘Athena had been looking for a recruit and she is really hoping that Casey was the right person to choose because that was Athena’s last pin. Casey has courage and determination and hope, and that is what Tomorrowland needs.’



Of course what the crew behind Tomorrowland really needed was — well, Tomorrowland. One of ten filming locations, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain served as the futuristic location of the other-worldly titular location. Despite looking the part, however, the location would leave something to be desired when it came to accommodating all of Tomorrowland’s treasures.

For that, the crew built their own set known as the Bridgeway Plaza. At nearly half the size of a football field, the enormous set couldn’t be housed in any sound stage that could accommodate not only size but all of the lighting structures and camera work required to produce the aerial shots of the city. The Bridgeway Plaza set took six months to build and consists of the city’s energy sphere, a massive monitor and — naturally — a full size monorail system, known as the levitating elevated vehicle. Sitting atop a track that rises 16 feet in the air, the monorail train weighs a total of approximately 35,000 lbs. With the safety of the cast and filming requirements in mind, the crew managed to devise a system using hydraulic winches that could be shut down very quickly in an emergency and brakes that they could apply whenever they wanted to bring the monorail to a very specific mark to stop and have the doors open automatically.

Also seen in the Japanese trailer is the Houston, TX-based sci-fi memorabilia shop, ‘Blast from the Past,’ with the ‘very odd’ Gernsbacks (Keegan-Michael Key and Kathryn Hahn) as proprietors. In the film, Casey finds the shop as a result of a search on the internet in her quest for some answers. The store was actually fully constructed and stocked on a soundstage and the inventory consists of thousands of items: some purchased, some manufactured specifically for the film and some came directly out of director/co-writer Brad Bird’s personal collection.

For the farm and its cornfields, the team shot in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, where crops were grown specifically for filming. The Alberta farmer was even paid to grow a specific winter wheat for its shade of color to suit Bird’s vision for the film.

All in all, it’s said there are over 90 combinations of sets and locations used for Tomorrowland including those mentioned above as well as Paris, the Bahamas and Disneyland. Given the content of the film, the crew also managed to shoot at Launch Pad 39 at NASA’s Cape Canaveral.

Thank you sevens

"Disenchanted grump"? Wonder if that's also how George sees himself?

mmhhh don't think he would be disenchanted otherwise he would have no motivation to start new Projects. But as a little grump" i can imagine

10 New ‘Tomorrowland’ Character and Behind the Scenes Details
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From Sevens link

10 New ‘Tomorrowland’ Character and Behind the Scenes Details

The curtain has almost been fully pulled back from Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland. After the full trailer showed some impressive visuals, an international trailer dropped some major details, including the film’s connection to the Walt Disney theme parks. At this point, most of us have more than enough information on the family sci-fi fantasy.
If you need more though, Disney is happy to oblige. New press notes on the film have a ton of interesting tidbits on the main characters, the locations, themes and the behind the scenes inspirations for the film. Read 10 new Tomorrowland movie details below.
Stitch Kingdom has the full run down of the details from the Disney Media Site. Here are the 10 bits we found most interesting.
Minor Spoilers follow. These are quotes from the press notes, not my words, hence the blockquotes.

10 new Tomorrowland Movie Details

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The 1952 Box

Damon Lindelof heard about a box that had been discovered accidentally in a closet at the Disney Studios. The mystery box contained all sorts of fascinating models and blueprints, photographs and letters related to the inception of Tomorrowland and the 1964 World’s Fair. Lindelof was excited by the find and recalls, “I began to imagine that the contents of the box were a guide to a secret story that nobody knew. But if so, what would that story be? And the most obvious answer to me was that there really was a place called Tomorrowland that was not a theme park but existed somewhere in the real world.” This idea became the jumping-­off point for the story of “Tomorrowland.”

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George Clooney’s Character

George Clooney describes his character Frank as “a disenchanted grump who was a bit of a dreamer as a young boy, a smart little scientist kid. Young Frank goes to a place that he thinks is the greatest in the universe and he believes the world is going to be much better off because of it. He finds out that those things were untrue and becomes probably the most cynical person one could be. He isolates himself on his family farm and plans to spend the rest of his life there   but is forced to deal with his past because of situations that happen in the film.”

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The ideas behind the film

Hugh Laurie himself recalls being “completely struck by the first conversation I had with Brad and  Damon about the morbid defeatism that has gripped the world. There are benefits beyond number to modern life, but they don’t seem to bring us a feeling of satisfaction, triumph or accomplishment. Brad and Damon laid out this extraordinary vision of a future that ran completely counter to all popular ideas about how the world is going, and I was completely taken with it.”

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Britt Robertson’s character

Of her character Casey Newton,  the daughter of a NASA engineer who is about to be laid off now that the space program has been all but shut down, Robertson says, “She’s this really smart chick who has always wanted to be an astronaut. It’s her passion and what she and her father have bonded over. Casey has this drive to do big things and change the world; she wants the world to be a place that’s full of hope and inspiration, but she doesn’t know how to make it so.”

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How Casey gets the pin

In the film, Athena gives Casey a pin that jumpstarts her quest for Tomorrowland. “Athena had been looking for a recruit,” says young  Raffey Cassidy about the character she plays, “and she is really hoping that Casey was the right person to choose because that was Athena’s last pin. Casey has courage and determination and hope, and that is what Tomorrowland needs.”

Nicky thanks for the hard work. But there's five more details on page 2...which you missed

I also think that tomorrowland movie is going to be a big hit. It has really great stuff. I am eagerly waiting for its release date. Well dear, thanks for sharing the interview details with us.