SYNOPSIS:
Close your eyes. Open your mind. You will be unprepared.
"Sucker Punch" is an epic action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what's real and what is imaginary.
She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls—the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), the outspoken Rocket (Jena Malone), the street-smart Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and the fiercely loyal Amber (Jamie Chung)—to band together and try to escape a terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue (Oscar Isaac) and Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino), before the mysterious High Roller (Jon Hamm) comes for Babydoll.
Led by Babydoll, the girls engage in fantastical warfare against everything from samurais to serpents, with a virtual arsenal at their disposal. Together, they must decide what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive. But with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn), their unbelievable journey—if they succeed—will set them free.
Born from the creative vision of filmmaker Zack Snyder ("Watchmen," "300"), "Sucker Punch" features an ensemble cast of young stars, including Emily Browning ("The Uninvited"), Abbie Cornish ("Bright Star"), Jena Malone ("Into the Wild"), Vanessa Hudgens (the "High School Musical" films) and Jamie Chung ("Sorority Row"). The film's main cast also includes Carla Gugino ("Watchmen") and Oscar Isaac ("Robin Hood"), with Jon Hamm ("The Town," TV's "Mad Men") and Scott Glenn ("The Bourne Ultimatum").
Zack Snyder directed "Sucker Punch" from a screenplay he wrote with Steve Shibuya, based on Snyder's story. Snyder and Deborah Snyder produced, with Thomas Tull, Wesley Coller, Jon Jashni, Chris deFaria, Jim Rowe and William Fay serving as executive producers.
The behind-the-scenes creative team includes Academy Award®-winning production designer Rick Carter ("Avatar") and "Watchmen" and "300" veterans director of photography Larry Fong, editor William Hoy and costume designer Michael Wilkinson. The music is by Tyler Bates and Marius DeVries.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Legendary Pictures, a Cruel and Unusual Production, a Zack Snyder film, "Sucker Punch." Opening nationwide in theaters and IMAX on March 25, 2011, the film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
THE PRODUCTION
Filmmaker Zack Snyder wanted to push the envelope of what is fantasy versus reality in his first film to be based on his own wholly original concept, "Sucker Punch."
Snyder, who conceived of the story and co-wrote, produced and directed the film, states, "Sucker Punch is a movie about escape, both literal and figurative. It shows how the mind can create an almost impenetrable barricade against the real world, and to what lengths we're willing to go, what sacrifices we're willing to make, to get out of a difficult situation."
On the heels of "300" and "Watchmen," the visually complex film is the result of an idea Snyder says "was an evolution for me. I'm inspired by fantasy art and magazines like Heavy Metal. It's sort of a mash-up between those influences, as well as 'Twilight Zone' and the writings of Richard Bach."
The full story was years in the making. "I'd written a short story a while ago, which included a character named Babydoll," Snyder says. "As I worked on it further, the idea evolved and expanded, and took on a life of its own."
Producer Deborah Snyder adds, "It was so liberating for Zack to create something for which there were no preconceived expectations. This movie could be whatever he wanted it to be, and even though the story changed over time, at its center it has always been about this young woman, Babydoll, who is faced with so much adversity that she retreats into these fantastical worlds in her mind in order to cope with what's going on around her. In so doing, she finds great strength within. She's a survivor."
With a fair amount of the story and characters fleshed out, Zack Snyder turned to longtime friend Steve Shibuya to co-write the script. "Together, Steve and I worked through how it was all going to fit together."
"When Zack first approached me, I thought his ideas for the film were so daring," Shibuya offers. "He wanted to make a movie without any limitations on the action, to have an almost endless amount of space within these vastly different worlds to push the on-screen battles as far as we could—or even farther—all within this story of a young woman literally fighting her own demons on a journey to redemption."
Ironically, though the story has virtually no boundaries of time and space, it is set in one of the most confining places imaginable—a forbidding Vermont mental institution in the 1960s. Nonetheless, the film transports the viewer along with Babydoll as her fantasies take her to otherworldly places at once ancient and futuristic and everywhere in between. She and her fellow warriors, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber, battle everything from gargantuan samurai beasts to reanimated zombie soldiers to fire-breathing dragons. At the girls' disposal: their wits, an arsenal of deadly hardware, and their willingness to work together to survive.
It would seem that there are no limits to Babydoll's imagination as she falls down a rabbit hole of her own making.