When you’re making (or in this case remaking) a film about killer fish snacking on attractive young people at a lakeside resort, you pretty much know that aspirations to high art are something that happen to other movies. It would seem as though **Piranha 3D **director Alexandre Aja realised that from the start, since he’s selling his B-Movie tribute one two things: blood and boobs.
"I think we broke all the records in the manner of blood used," he tells MTV. "I don't remember the exact number, but we passed Kill Bill. You've never seen something like that before."
And most of that claret budget was spilled during one sequence that sounds particularly memorable… "The biggest thing for the fans is going to be the big spring break wet T-shirt contest, where we have thousands of spring break groups on the water. And the party has its climax when the piranhas come and start attacking everyone. It's almost 25 minutes of a huge massacre, and it's really insane." That's a pretty serious amount of time for a piranha massacre, but it's definitely true to the pulp roots of the original Piranha.
While the film will be a blend of true 3D effects (the fish) and converted footage (everyone else), Aja’s original idea was apparently to try the Avatar approach and go solid 3D for every frame. "We were going to shoot with the camera system Cameron used, and we found out that, of course, we don't have the same budget as an Avatar or as much time. And shooting on the water with a real 3D camera brings some very big restrictions in terms of dealing with reflections."
The film arrives, teeth and all, on August 20.