“‘Around the World in 80 Days’ is an adventure, comedy, love story, martial arts film, kids’ film, adults’ film, fantasy – and did I say adventure? – all rolled into one,” says executive producer Phyllis Alia. “I love it because it’s different and magical. It’s about traveling around the world and exposing the audience to new cultures. You can go to the movies and spend time in India and China and all of these really exotic locations that most people will never get a chance to see. It’s just exciting to watch the movie unfold.”

The director of the film, Frank Coraci, echoes his star and executive producer in describing the film’s multiple objectives. “Our overall goal was to make an epic with a sense of humor; a fun movie that brings audiences to new places,” he says. Disney/Walden’s

“This is a hilarious movie,” says Jackie Chan, who shows off his signature comic-action style in several set pieces. “Frank was very open to all the ideas I had for the action scenes. We both like to make people laugh, and I think people are going to laugh when they see this movie. It’s a lot of fun.”

For Walden Media founder Cary Granat, “Around the World in 80 Days” was a chance to develop a fresh cinematic vision of the book, which was first published by Verne in 1873. Granat saw the project as a perfect fit for Walden, which—with films like the critically acclaimed box-office hit “Holes” and the highly anticipated upcoming adventure, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”—has focused on taking both classic and modern titles and subject matter and making them accessible to audiences of all ages.

“No project blends curiosity and imagination better for the family audience than the adventure of going around the world in 80 days,” says Granat.

“I think that if everybody understands everybody else’s culture and religion, then there will be no more fighting, no more war,” says Chan. “That’s what this movie is about—gaining a greater understanding of the world around us.” To direct the film, Granat tapped Frank Coraci, a veteran comedy director with the right skills for a wide-ranging project. “Walden found in Frank an incredible visionary who has taken the classic Jules Verne story and infused it with such magic that it jumps off the screen,” says Granat. “This is a special and wonderful piece.”

At first glance, Coraci, the director of the comedies “The Wedding Singer” and “The Waterboy,” might seem like an unorthodox choice to helm this sprawling, big-budget spectacular. But the producers saw the situation differently. “Frank is the perfect director to make this movie,” says Alia. “He’s adept at combining the action, the adventure, and the love story and wrapping it in this crazy, twisted comedy.”

“Frank knows how to bring the fun,” says producer Hal Lieberman, who has also produced such films as “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and “U-571.” “His instincts and his intuition are great. This is a big movie, and it gave him an opportunity to step up his vision in terms of the production, the size, and the look.”

With global travel so much more accessible today than in Verne’s day – not to mention a world made smaller by the growth of television and other media – Coraci knew the material required a novel approach. “I wanted to make a really imaginative movie, like the ones I grew up on,” says Coraci. Since his days watching James Bond films, Coraci loved inventions. “I thought, ‘Let’s make an adventure, and let’s make Phileas Fogg an inventor so that we can create all these great gadgets.’ The whole idea of Phileas being ahead of his time is our way of adding to the fun and excitement of the story.”

British television sensation Steve Coogan, who plays Fogg, welcomed Coraci’s changes to the somewhat stuffy protagonist. “Fogg is deliberately portrayed in the book as quite a grey character. The approach Frank took was to make him passionate about something,” says Coogan. “There’s more opportunity for comedy because he’s very insecure about himself.”

Teaming with an all-star international cast was a dream-come-true for Coraci. With Jackie Chan leading the way as Passepartout and Coogan as the inventor, the filmmakers brought in a stable of the world’s biggest stars in cameo roles, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathy Bates, and Rob Schneider.

“The film has great surprises as the characters travel around the world, and I wanted one of those surprises to be the people they meet,” says Coraci. “A great way to do that was to have a series of cameos from well-known actors and celebrities, where they could poke fun at themselves and their personalities and also just make the movie even more fun.

“Everybody wants to work with these guys,” continues the director. “It was a dream project, where all our wishful thinking became reality: ‘Well, what if we could get Arnold on board? He’d be the best.’ And he was the best – they were all the best.”

“I think they were attracted by the quality of this movie and by the fact that it just seemed like it would be a good time,” says Jackie Chan. “I’ve known Arnold for a long time, and I know that he’s always a happy person on-set, always fun. Kathy Bates is great too – she’s the perfect choice for Queen Victoria.”

Comedy legend John Cleese and “Saturday Night Live” regular Will Forte were also added to the ensemble. Cleese explains that he “plays a London bobby, ‘round about 1885; very old style, old-fashioned kind of guy; not too smart.” Forte is his young, naïve sidekick.

For Forte, working with John Cleese was nothing short of awesome. “He’s always been an idol of mine, and a comedic inspiration,” says Forte. “I’ve loved him in all his movies. He’s so funny in this—it was hard not to laugh while we were doing the scenes. It was such an honor to work with him.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as Prince Hapi, a hopelessly vain Turkish prince who falls for Monique. The Governor, who had previously worked with producer Hal Lieberman on “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” was also eager to work with the cast and crew. “I am a big admirer of Jackie Chan,” he says. “Frank Coraci is a terrific director, because he really develops scenes well. He pulls the best performances out of actors, and he’s great with comedy.”

Rob Schneider, who also starred in Coraci’s “The Waterboy,” makes an appearance as a malodorous hobo who teaches Phileas how to beg. “Frank gets comedy,” says Schneider, “and Steve Coogan’s got great timing. He’s great to play off of. He’s a natural comedian. He is Phileas. You couldn’t ask for a better comic actor to work with.

“‘Around the World in 80 Days’ has the modern-day feel of an action picture, but in Jules Verne’s world,” Schneider continues. “I think Jules Verne would be very happy with this version.”

The chance to travel around the world proved to be another enticement for the filmmakers. “We started running right out of the gate,” says producer Bill Badalato, whose producing credits include “About Schmidt,” “Alien: Resurrection,” and “Men of Honor.” “One day I got a call from Cary, the next day I met Frank. I really wanted to work with Frank and really wanted to do the movie. Two days after I met Frank, we were on an airplane to scout locations. We had to come up with a plan really quickly. It was an incredible journey.”

Not surprisingly, the filmmakers circled the globe in their search for locations. “We started out with a ‘round-the-world trip of our own when we started scouting locations,” says Coraci. “We went to 18 countries in 15 days. I felt a little bit like Phileas Fogg myself. The thing was, in addition to letting us see all the places that Phileas and Passepartout and Monique go, the experience reminded us what it was like to travel; later, when I was filming, I would think, ‘Hmm. They’ve been traveling through China on a carriage for about 10 days. They’re sleepy, and they’re in pain.’ What I experienced on our scout definitely helped me figure out how to direct the scene.”

Since it was clearly impossible to take a film crew ‘around the world in 80 days,’ the goal was to choose a few locations that could be used in myriad ways. The strategy worked.

During the first scouting trip it was decided that Thailand would stand in for China and India. “Then we went around Europe and came to Berlin,” says Bill Badalato. “It was a complete surprise to us because Berlin was such a fantastic location. It was able to stand in for London and Paris.

“With these two countries, Germany and Thailand, we were able to more or less piece together ‘Around the World in 80 Days,’ and it looked spectacular,” continues Badalato.

“There’s always a temptation to shoot this kind of film, at least partially, on a back lot. But the audience’s eye is so acute now—they notice. Movies are major visual experiences, and the audience is very aware of effects, and how things look, and matte shots. It’s a very sophisticated audience out there.”

Assembling The Cast
The next step was assembling a cast with the talent to match the scope of the film. The director and the producers looked to worldwide superstar Jackie Chan. A gifted athlete and physical comedian blessed with warmth and accessibility, Chan plays Passepartout, Fogg’s valet, assistant, protector, and, on several occasions, savior. By the end of the film, one might even call them friends.

Producer Hal Lieberman sees the role of Passepartout—who is involved in a key subplot of the film that involves the Chinese valet returning a valuable jade Buddha to his home village of Lanzhou— as an opportunity for Chan to reach out to a new audience. “We asked Jackie to show sides of himself as an actor and a physical comedian that represent the next level of what he can do,” says Lieberman. “I think it’s the first time that we asked Jackie to play not just to grown-ups but to kids as well. And he is fantastic at it.”

Chan welcomed the acting challenge. “I really like the audience to treat me like an actor, not just an action star,” he says. “I’d rather be like a Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, or Al Pacino — you can act until you’re 60, 70, 80. But an action star… how long can he keep fighting?”

But in one way, Chan says, the role was not such a stretch. “I play a Chinese man who comes to England, a fish out of water. That’s what I am in real life – it required no research! “I’m really happy to be in an adventure movie that spans the globe and a family movie. Everybody knows the story; I’m honored to be involved,” says Chan.

One thing Chan had to relearn for a role in which he impersonates a French valet was the French language. As a child in China, Chan had learned the language and spoke it fluently. As the years went by, though, he fell out of practice. With a little guidance, he learned to sing a mean “Frère Jacques.”

When he wasn’t learning something, Chan was educating the cast and crew about martial arts and film combat, as well as designing fight sequences. Inspired by everyone from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, Chan and Coraci put together several of the film’s most exciting and dynamic scenes. Chan performed in them, too, often going through 20 of the same costume in one day and dozens of pairs of shoes. “I taught the fighting to so many people,” he says. “It was fun. I can make anyone a great action hero!”

Hong Kong-born Chan is an accomplished instructor. When Chan was younger, he became skilled at the ‘southern style’ of martial arts, dominated by jumping. Later, he learned ‘northern style,’ which incorporated more movement. As he completed more movies, he learned everything from boxing, Karate, Hapkido and Judo to skateboarding and motorcycle riding. Today, he calls his style “Chinese chop suey. Everything!”

Even so, Chan pays his director the ultimate compliment. “Frank really concentrates on the movie. He’s very good. Sometimes even he taught me how to fight! He’s full of energy.”

Chan’s own exuberance and professionalism was contagious among the crew, and many recognized that Coraci/Chan was a winning combination. “Cutting a Jackie Chan fight scene is great, because he really knows action thoroughly,” says editor Tom Lewis. “He’s a master because he knows storytelling and comedy; his instincts are terrific. It’s great working with Frank because he really knows how to construct a scene dynamically; he knows how to weave the action into the story in an organic way. He and Jackie are both thinking three steps ahead of the game.”

“For me, it’s always fun making a film,” says Chan. “And of course, going around the world is more fun for me because I see so many things. I learn so many things when I travel. I really like to show the audience some Chinese culture.”

When it came to the role of Phileas Fogg, Frank Coraci wanted English actor Steve Coogan right from the beginning: “You had to believe that Phileas was a genius, but he also had to be funny in a non-self conscious way. That was always my vision for the role. Once I saw Steve in ‘24 Hour Party People’ I knew I had found Phileas.”

Cary Granat at Walden agreed: “Steve Coogan is the Peter Sellers of our generation. He is incredibly talented.”

One of Britain’s biggest television stars, Coogan’s best-known creation is Alan Partridge, a role he has reprised in several series on British television and has won him several awards, including three British Comedy Awards. His show, “The Man Who Thinks He’s It,” was nominated for a 1999 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Entertainment for the 1998 season.

Coogan was drawn to the role for several reasons. “It’s an iconic part and a famous name. It’s great to play a big character like that,” he explains. “It’s quite a responsibility to play a famous character, to become someone who people already have ideas about and try and fulfill their expectations. But that attracted me to the part.

“Early on, I got to know Frank’s style as a director,” recalls Coogan. “I was really impressed with his intuitive skills in terms of comedy and comic timing and comic beats. He’s a collaborator—he made me feel like he wanted my opinions.”

Coogan plunged into the role of Fogg, an old-fashioned English gentleman faced with an outrageous wager courtesy of Lord Kelvin of the Royal Academy of Science. “Kelvin bets him that he can’t go around the world in 80 days,” says the actor. “If he fails, he has to give up his membership in the Royal Academy of Science. If he wins the bet, he becomes the president of the Royal Academy of Science. A lot is at stake.” Fogg tries to pitch his inventions to the Royal Academy, but according to Coogan, “He’s a thorn in their side. None of his inventions really work; they’re all half-baked.”

Phileas the inventor is also somewhat relationship-challenged. “He relates to machines very well, but not to people,” says Coogan. “He’s not very impressed with art. He’s one of those people who think science is the answer to everything and art is irrelevant.”

One of the people who help change Phileas’ point of view is a lovely French artist named Monique. “Just like Phileas, Monique is ahead of her time,” says Frank Coraci. “She is a woman with a passion and the boldness to go for what she believes, yet she still has the ability to be compassionate, loving and fun.” Belgian born Cécile de France experienced a combination of honor, pleasure, enthusiasm, and a bit of fear starring in her first big-budget English language film. “This film is a true adventure film like the ones I saw when I was a child,” says De France. “This is the kind of movie that made me dream, made me want to be an actress.”

When filmmakers started scouting for “Around the World in 80 Days,” “we had dancing around in our heads the perfect, ideal woman to play Monique LaRoche, the romantic lead to Phileas Fogg,” says Phyllis Alia. “We didn’t know who she was yet, but we knew she was a brilliant French actress.”

The filmmakers looked at dozens of tapes and took recommendations from casting directors. “No one even came close to Cécile. She is miraculous,” says Alia, who compares her to Ingrid Bergman and Dorothy Lamour. “She has that throwback quality to older films, to older actresses who had screen presence without saying a word. She illuminates the screen. There aren’t many young actresses that are beautiful and charming that have comedic timing. Cécile de France has it.”

De France describes Monique as “a young French avant-garde painter who is not taken seriously by Paris critics. She learns that Phileas and Passepartout are traveling around the world and decides to join them. She believes that the wonders of the world will lift her painting to new levels. On the outside Monique is an artist, so people think she has her head in the clouds. But in reality she’s like a sponge. She wants to learn everything. She’s ready to do anything to satisfy her curiosity.”

De France sees the romance that blossoms between Phileas and Monique as quite natural because “Phileas wants to push science further, and Monique wants to push art further.”

“We ended up with a really charming trio,” says producer Bill Badalato of the casting. “They are three very different people, which is exactly what the story is about.”

“It was always about casting the best people from the start,” says Frank Coraci. “We thought Jackie would be the perfect Passepartout. Steve Coogan is really a genius— funny without being self-conscious. Cécile just lit up the screen. She was strong, but also lovable and sweet and smart. The three leads are all from other countries, which is in the spirit of the movie.”

The winner of an Academy Award® in 2002 for his supporting role in “Iris,” versatile British character actor Jim Broadbent came on board to play Lord Kelvin, the president of the eccentrics in the Royal Academy of Science who makes the wager with Fogg. “He’s an amazing performer,” says Badalato.

“Lord Kelvin is essentially the baddie,” explains Broadbent. “He’s the nasty character who’s trying at every turn to prevent this wonderful journey from happening. He is a thoroughly unpleasant man. He chooses to believe that science and civilization have developed as much as they can, and the status quo suits him fine.”

The comedic aspects of the part appealed to Broadbent, who is known primarily for his dramatic performances. “The film benefits from a light touch, I think,” he says. “There’s a cartoony element to this that I haven’t really been part of in film before. It’s quite bold and broad in its comedic way, and it’s great fun for that.”

Director Coraci helped Broadbent make the most of the character’s frequent humorous moments. “It’s great to work with someone who is a specialist in comedy and knows exactly how comedic timing works on film,” says Broadbent of Coraci.

Ewen Bremner, a Scottish actor best known for his hard-edged performances in films like “Trainspotting” and “Black Hawk Down,” tackled the crowd-pleasing role of Inspector Fix. “Ewen is nothing less than astonishing,” says Bill Badalato. “He’s played in very intense contemporary dramas, but here he is in this period piece doing great comedy.”

The villainous Fix, hired by Lord Kelvin to follow the Fogg threesome around the world to keep them from winning the wager, is essentially a human punching bag. “Every single time he appears he winds up being pasted to the floor,” says Bremner. “He is always out of his depth, but he thinks he’s totally in command of the situation.

“I try to apprehend them but I’m foiled at every turn,” continues Bremner. “I wind up horribly destroyed every time I poke my head up.” When he’s not being squashed, burned, beaten, crushed, dragged, trampled, broken or generally wrecked, Fix “has to jump off buildings and fall out of windows. I get kicked out of steaming trains. Every nasty thing that could happen to me happens to me in this film. Jackie uses me as a shield and as a weapon.”

Says Coraci, “I always envisioned Fix’s character being a human cartoon character. Ewen is that and an amazing actor as well.”

Despite the abuse that Fix endures, Bremner gives kudos to Jackie Chan, who conjured up many of the outrageous hijinks in the scenes. “Jackie Chan choreographed fantastically clever and funny sequences for every scene that I was involved in,” says Bremner. “They were really well set up—Jackie put them together so that you don’t just fall out of a window or get a knock on the head. It was all set up so that each little second is filled with another comic catastrophe. It was great.”

British actor Ian McNeice plays London chief of police Colonel Kitchner. “He’s a pathetic idiot, really. A buffoon,” says McNeice of his character. “He gets everything wrong and he gets things thrown at him. He has a horrible time… until the end.”

Hong Kong-born Karen Joy Morris, one of Asia’s most popular actresses, will never forget working with Jackie Chan, with whom she engages in a brilliant fight scene in the film. In her first English language film, Morris plays General Fang, whom she describes as “really severe and menacing. Of course she’s a female villain, which makes her more interesting. It's always nice to play the baddie, and to be able to fight Jackie in one of his movies is about the coolest thing there is.”

Production Information
Principal photography began on “Around the World in 80 Days” in the sweltering heat of Thailand. On the first day of shooting, the unit had swelled to over 700 crew members. “Part of the learning process for the studio and for those of us in production was to find out what it took to get the job done all over the world,” says UPM Billy Badalato. “It was very different everywhere we went.” Luckily, he adds, the 700 crew members that showed up the first day whittled down to around 500 most days.

Despite the 125 degree heat and the vast scope of the production, Coraci kept the mood on the set as light as possible. “I have rarely worked for a director who is so respected by the actors,” comments producer Bill Badalato. “We worked hard. We worked long hours. But we enjoyed coming to work every day because Frank is a hoot.”

Thailand served mainly as the location for Lanzhou, Passepartout’s home in China, where the loyal valet returns the jade Buddha so prized by his village. Production designer Perry Andelin Blake, who worked with Coraci previously on “The Waterboy” and “The Wedding Singer,” built a Chinese village in the foothills of the mountains in Thailand that amazed the cast and crew. “It looked spectacular, even from a distance,” says Steve Coogan. “It’s a beautiful old village, beautifully made, beautifully constructed.”

It was in this village that Blake and Coraci had a run-in with one of the Brahma bulls that were being used to pull carts in a scene. “One day Frank and I were walking to the Chinese village, and we saw this big bull running down the main street,” recounts Blake. “We thought, ‘Wow, that looks very authentic.’ All of a sudden, we see people running and scattering. The bull was getting wild and crazy. He’s running and people are diving out of the way. And we realized that the bull was actually loose. We ducked into a building and the bull went running past. It took about 25 minutes to finally get him restrained!”

The production spent four and a half weeks in Thailand, making stops in the capital of Bangkok; and the southern cities of Phuket (known as “the Pearl of the Andaman sea” for its pristine beaches) and Krabi. “It really worked out well. Thailand is a magical place,” says Coraci, “and I believe that magic will come through in the film.”

The production then moved to Europe. One of the key sequences shot in Berlin was the climactic scene where Fogg, Passepartout, and Monique crash-land their flying machine at the steps of the London Royal Academy of Science in front of hundreds of onlookers.

Says production designer Perry Blake, “We did a little crash test. It wasn’t full speed, but still…. We had a gigantic construction crane which was over 100 feet high. It was on a long track so that we could not only bring the flying machine in but we could drop it down and fairly well control it.”

The scene took place in a large plaza in Berlin. The square was “Trafalgar Square-esque,” according to Blake. “It turned out to be a fantastic place because not only was it spectacular and grand, but it was surrounded by an opera house designed by famed architect Karl Frederick Schinkel that stood in as the Royal Academy of Science.” One side of the plaza didn’t work as well, so the unit built its own 35 foot tall, 200 foot long building in the same style. “We tried to match the color and the style and the tone of the other buildings, and then we used trees to tie it together and anchor it into the plaza. We were able to shoot in almost any direction,” says Blake.

A trick the production used to conceal modern buildings during this important scene was a huge lion. “We built an oversized base unit, and I sculpted a giant lion on it. It was on wheels so that we could move it around,” says Blake. With changes in camera angles and moving the lion to different spots, the filmmakers were able to block several structures.

The unit also filmed in Goerlitz, a small town in eastern Germany that seemed untouched by the modern world. “It was a small, beautiful little gem of a city,” says Blake, and its quaint streets doubled for French streets. The production also filmed briefly on a back lot in Germany, which stood in for San Francisco.

During filming, “Around the World in 80 Days” endured the normal little catastrophes that one might expect for an undertaking of this magnitude. Not only did the production shoot in many locations across the world, but many different languages were spoken on set and various interpreters were needed. “On American sets, we take for granted the language and the culture,” says Phyllis Alia. “On this movie, we needed to learn on the job what works and what doesn’t work for Thai crews, or German crews. We were on set in Thailand and Frank would be talking to the actors, and then we’d break for a second and five different interpreters would tell five different sets of people in Mandarin and Cantonese and Thai.

“I think that we gained a larger respect and understanding for other cultures,” says Alia. “The spirit of the journey of ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ is this spirit of opening your eyes to other cultures, and that’s why this has been a truly special filmmaking experience for the whole crew.”

“It’s a time to embrace other cultures and make the world a smaller place,” says Frank Coraci, “so we wanted to make a movie that brought people together.”

Producer Hal Lieberman agrees that the film has particular relevance in the charged atmosphere of today’s world climate. “These are hard times, and our movie at its core is about kindness, generosity, and spirit across the world. It’s a nice story and a nice message. I think the movie speaks to the best places inside of us, because there’s people all around the world, meeting and connecting and caring about each other.”

“It’s a very timely movie,” says Steve Coogan. “The world’s experienced a lot of problems and this is a way of bringing people together. It’s a very unifying, positive view of the world as a global village.”

Once all was said and done — for two weeks after principal photography, a crew went to locations like Paris, Austria, Cornwall (England), Hong Kong, the California desert, and the Great Wall of China — the film was shot in over 10 different countries and used CGI only when absolutely necessary. “It was about actually being in the places,” stresses Coraci. “It’s like a movie you don’t see anymore … a throwback film enhanced with today’s technology.”

About The Inventions
“When we started conceiving the film, we really wanted it to be fun,” says production designer Perry Blake. “It’s a family film, and we wanted parents to enjoy it as much as their kids.”

A large part of the broad appeal of the film derives from Fogg’s wild inventions. The filmmakers wanted to portray Fogg as a kind of benign mad scientist who pieces his inventions together from the various objects he finds in his garage. “I used to dream things up when I was a kid,” says Blake. “I used to make them out of all of these crazy parts. So we really wanted Fogg’s inventions to seem like they had been made out of different things that he just found.”

Fogg puts this ingenuity to good use in the film when he has to make the flying machine on the fly while he’s on the Atlantic steamer ship. Fogg’s flying machine was built out of a dizzying array of parts from the boat: sails, masts, planks, the propeller is made of paddles.

Perry Blake envisioned Fogg’s jetpack 35,000 feet in the air, while flying to a location on a scout. “I looked out the window and saw these jet engines. We thought it would be cool if the jetpack was like a big jet engine on someone’s back, really overscaled and goofy in its size. That was one of our first drawings. As we developed it, we thought, why don’t we make it something that he created out of elements that he had around. So we incorporated the barrel as the main jetpack with all of this other stuff coming off of it—pipes, hoses that look like they came from a saxophone or trumpet, leather bands he took from his horse…”

Other inventions include Fogg’s internal combustion car, which runs on beans. “We took a regular carriage and souped it up. We wanted to give it a modern feel but still look like it was from that time period,” says Blake. It almost took on the look of a hot rod, “a dragster that has a big exhaust pipe coming out of the side. We painted it a bright metal blue.” Once it was built, Blake and others enjoyed test driving it around the lot.

The “urban transport device,” an early version of in-line skates, is another Fogg creation. “We wanted to feel like he went into the back of his house or down in the basement and he found some old wheels off of a little cart. Then he took them and put them on his boots, and that’s how he made the shoes,” says Blake.

“This movie takes place during a period in time when many great inventions were created,” points out Frank Coraci. “This whole movie is about Phileas believing in his dreams and having courage. Some of his inventions will actually exist and be used years later.”