Brad Pitt Covers THR, Shares His Hollywood Mantra: "Game On, F--kers!"

"As I get older, I am enjoying more the producorial side of things—not being so forefront in the camera," the actor reveals

By Alyssa Toomey Oct 02, 2013 7:32 PMTags
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Brad Pitt may seemingly have a picture-perfect life, but his rise to the top certainly hasn't been a straight shot, particularly in the past few years when he's stepped behind the camera as a producer.

"As I get older, I am enjoying more the producorial side of things—not being so forefront in the camera—the creativity of putting the pieces together," the Academy Award-winning actor says in The Hollywood Reporter's cover story, which details the pitfalls and successes of Pitt's production company, Plan B Entertainment.

Founded in 2003 by Pitt, Brad Grey and then-wife Jennifer Aniston, the business, under Brad's leadership, has continually squashed critics' claims that the company would not survive. 

Namely, in 2006 when Grey exited for Paramount and Pitt and Aniston split, leaving the actor as the sole owner of the company, and more recently, when his zombie thriller World War Z encountered a slew of production problems, which led to a series of reshoots that ballooned the film's budget to over $200 million.

Despite having to reshoot the end of the movie and a scathing piece in Vanity Fair which detailed Brad's World War Z nightmare, the actor persevered, and the flick went on to earn $539 million globally.

"I have done this long enough and have sat in editing rooms with enough talented people that I have a grasp of, 'How do we shape things when they are not working?'" he recalls. "The idea was, let people see it and let them talk."

Pitt's personal plan B for the zombie flick clearly proved to be a success, and now there's even talk of a possible World War Z sequel.

"We are talking about it," Pitt reveals. "We are going to investigate a script. We have a lot of ideas we will cull from. Nobody is writing just yet, but we are compiling our ideas."

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Despite WWZ's triumph, production on the company's forthcoming flick, 12 Years a Slave (the film's star, Chiwetel Ejiofor, poses with Pitt on the THR cover), wasn't exactly smooth sailing, due to the controversial content as well as the company's box-office inconsistency.

But once again, Pitt forged forward with the flick, which has since been called "one of the year's best films," slamming his skeptics while adopting his own personal Hollywood mantra: "Game on, f--kers!" (How great is that?!).

12 Years' Oct. 18 release date is quickly approaching, and Pitt isn't slowing down anytime soon. The company now is moving forward with a number of projects including an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' Marilyn Monroe novel Blonde, as well as The Last Family of England, a story centered on a talking dog, and Black Hole, a project that teams Plan B with David Fincher.

But even as the company continues to grow, Pitt says Plan B's strategy will remain the same as it has been from the start:

"We follow the storytellers, and our little garage band of a production company's mandate was [always] to help complex films get over the hill if they need a little push. We are in a fortunate position to do that."

And despite Plan B's pitfalls, Pitt insists he has no regrets.

"I wouldn't want to change anything," he tells THR. "I like extremes."

Game on, indeed.