A biography for Duncan Joneshasn’t been written yet.
“I was a little geeky kid anyway. If I wasn't shooting little stop-animation films, then I was playing computer games or Dungeons & Dragons.”
“I was such a big 'Dirty Dozen,' 'Where Eagles Dare,' 'A Bridge Too Far' - all those kinds of movies I loved.”
“I've been very strategic in how I've approached the jobs I want to do.”
“There's a depth to the look that you get with models that you just can't get with CGI. It's about the detail that you just wouldn't think to put in.”
“Even before 'Moon,' I did a short film called 'Whistle,' and it had a lot of the things that I thought I would need to be able to do on a feature film: I shot on location, there was special FX work, there was stunt work, we used squibs, I shot on 35 mm film.”
“Science-fiction cities in general, I think, are so hard to get right, because it's so easy to just play some cheesy music or do something that takes you right out of it, but 'Blade Runner' got it right, and I love that about the film.”
“I love incredibly imaginative, speculative sci-fi.”
“Terry Gilliam, he's a really interesting and amazing film maker, and when he gets it right, it's really powerful stuff.”
“I took an incredibly roundabout route getting into feature films.”
“I guess, as a director, you sort of take the script, and you find ways to interpret it.”
“I have to work with the team at Blizzard and the producers on the film and convince them that, as a fan, I have a unique and hopefully entertaining way of taking people through the first contact story, which is really what sets up 'Warcraft' for everyone else.”
“I was the only kids to have Sony Umatic tapes of the old 'Star Wars.' It was such an old technology; you needed two or three tapes to show one movie, so the kids used to come over to my house, and we would watch 'Star Wars.'”
“I was a big fan of Luc Besson and obviously Ridley Scott.”
“Jeron Lanier and 'Lawnmower Man.' That was VR. And there was the VFX1, that big giant VR prototype unit, and I was like, 'I am going to save my money and get one of those.' And then VR just sort of drifted away.”
“My dad and I used to shoot little one-stop animations on an old 8mm film camera when I was no more than 7 or 8, and when he was away at work, I would keep shooting nonsensical, short animated films using 'Star Wars' figures or Smurfs - depended what the narrative was.”
“My job is really to... everyone is reading the script, and my job is to make sure we all interpret it in as much the same way as possible. And then I give them the freedom to sort of - to get their performance across and then make suggestions where things are not working and accentuate and push things where they really are working.”
“It took a generation of filmmakers who loved and were raised on comic books to make movies that you actually cared about and felt something for. I think that's absolutely the same with what's going on with videogame movies.”
“My parents did call me Zowie now and then, but then, realising that it drew too much attention, they called me 'Joe'. Then, later, I sort-of co-opted my own name back.”
“That's what I wanted to do... I wanted to make a great film that just happened to be based on a video game.”
“One of the things I think is unique and signature about Blizzard is that whenever they do their games, and with 'Warcraft' in particular, they take the things they love and put a twist on it. They showed that heroes can come from the most unexpected places, and as a player, you can play as a hero, on all sides.”