Last week I got to tell you all about my trip to Bulgaria back in 2012 to visit the set of Noam Murro's 300: Rise of An Empire, but now the marketing department behind the sequel has organized a look behind the scenes for all of you - in the form of a brand new featurette. In the four minute-plus video clip you can see above, the stars and filmmakers take you through the true history that inspired the plot of the new film and the challenge that comes with living up to the blockbuster legacy of Zack Snyder's original film.
In the sequel, which is based on a script co-written by Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, audiences will be taken to a story told parallel to the Battle of Thermopylae (as seen with King Leonidas as the Spartan warriors of the first film) and will instead focus on the Athenian hero Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who helped unite the forces of Greece against the armies of Persia. On the other side of the film's plot we will also see the rise of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) as he takes the throne as the God-King of Persia and sends his General Artemisia (Eva Green) and her Navy to destroy the Greeks. Of course, it's all done with plenty of blood, gore, as you can see in the theatrical trailer below.
While this new featurette does a good job explaining the plot of 300: Rise of An Empire, what it sadly lacks is any kind of technical details about how the film was made. Much like Snyder's first film, the sequel was filmed using large amounts of green screen as backgrounds, but we don't really see any of that here. Hopefully somewhere down the line they will come out with a visual effects featurette that explains the technological feats needed to make the film, but that may not end up getting made until it's time to release the movie on Blu-ray later in the year.
300: Rise of an Empire co-stars Lena Heaey, Jack O'Connell, and David Wenham and will be in theaters on March 7th. Are you looking forward to the movie?
