Mark Ruffalo on All the Kings Men and Zodiac

While promoting his newest release Just Like Heaven, Mark Ruffalo was kind enough to talk about two of his upcoming projects, All the Kings Men and Zodiac.

With a release date set for December, All the Kings Men tells the story of the spectacular rise and fall of a charismatic Southern politician, "Boss" Willie Stark played by Sean Penn. Jude Law co-stars as Jack Burden, the once idealistic, now embittered ex-reporter who unwittingly fuels Stark's corrupt political ambitions. Below is what he briefly had to say about both films.

Now your next movie is quite a departure in ALL THE KINGS MEN?

Mark Ruffalo: Yeah, I finished this (movie) and part of doing this movie is that you guys (DreamWorks) have to work out the dates with ALL THE KINGS MEN because I have to do that movie, I wanna do this movie (JUST LIKE HEAVEN) but I really want to do that movie too so lets all get together and make it work out because I knew I wanted to go into something a little bit more...that's a character part. I have four scenes in it, but it's from a great novel. It's one the great American political novels and it has an amazing group of people, Sean Penn who's one of my heroes and James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins and Patricia Clarkson great cool cast

What part do you play in the film?

Mark Ruffalo: I play the doctor (Adam Stanton) who assassinates him (Struck), who is Kate Winslet's (Ann Stanton) brother.

Did you look at the original film?

Mark Ruffalo: Yes, I did but it's very different.

Mark's follow up film is not scheduled for release until next year. Zodiac is based on the infamous real events of the hunt for the serial killer.

(Just Like Heaven) takes place in San Francisco, are you going back to San Francisco for Zodiac?

Mark Ruffalo: Yeah I play Dave Toschi who is the head inspector for the SFPD.

How true to the events are you guys sticking to in the movie?

Mark Ruffalo: It's as true as I have ever seen a movie be to the actual events.

Is it close to the book?

Mark Ruffalo: The guy Robert Graysmith who wrote The Zodiac Unmasked. It's based a lot on his stuff but David Fincher has gone out and interviewed everybody, the cops and everyone had to sign off on the script. He has 2500 pounds of information, his murder book for it is, when we showed it to a SFPD detective, he said, "my god we couldn't even get that much information," which is why they never caught him cause the guy was killing on county lines so there were 5 different police...

Police stations?

Mark Ruffalo: Yes, yes so there was no jurisdiction, so it was driving everyone crazy and it was really a mess so that's kind of what the movie was about.