'Shoot 'Em Up' delivers in Gotham

Seven years after writing the "Shoot 'Em Up" script, writer-director Michael Davis saw his film come to life on big screen at the pic’s preem on Wednesday in Gotham.

"The first place we went to was New Line," pic’s producer Don Murphy explained during the after-party at the Bowery Hotel. "Interestingly enough the second place we went to was New Line. Somebody working there originally said no. We said why. We got an idiotic reason. We ignored them. Then we went to somebody else two months later and they were like this is brilliant."

A hesitant Davis clarified the reasoning behind the original rejection of the pic about a mysterious man protecting a newborn baby from criminals out to kill it.

"What it was is they loved the script and the animation I had done (in conjunction with the script) but one of the principles of the company had just had a baby and they didn’t feel like it was the right time to show them a baby in jeopardy script. So we decided to get more people behind it and then picked the right time to show them this crazy action movie again."

Working with a newborn, who shared the screen with pic’s Clive Owen through much of his violent, shootout sequences, wasn’t much of a concern for pic’s bad guy, Paul Giamatti. "The baby wasn’t there that much while I was shooting and when it was, it wasn’t real most of the time. So I didn’t care about the baby and clearly the baby’s parents didn’t care either," Giamatti joked. "It’s insane that parents would put their newborn in that situation, but luckily a lot of the times it’s not real." (A. Morfoot)