'The Main Event': Director Jay Karas on the WWE-themed film for children and its connection to superhero movies
Netflix’s upcoming family comedy film, ‘The Main Event’ follows Leo, an 11-year-old pro wrestling fan who goes through many hardships like bullying and confidence issues. All that changes when Leo discovers a magical mask, which will make him super strong, perhaps even strong enough to be the next WWE superstar! Jay Karas, the director of ‘The Main Event’ had a chat with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) about the film, wrestling and comedy.
Karas said that at the core of the story in ‘The Main Event’ was just a kid (Seth Carr) trying to navigate challenges at home and at school. “He's a huge wrestling fan and he finds this magical wrestling mask. And when he puts the mask on, you know, all these amazing things -- it's power, strength, confidence, ability, wisdom -- this sort of alter ego emerges,” he said. “When I was a kid, I was a huge wrestling fan. And you know, I think if I told the ten-year-old version of myself that someday I'd have an opportunity to potentially direct a movie with wrestlers... I just dove in full force and I wanted to direct this movie.”
When asked who his favorite wrestling stars were from back in the day when World Wrestling Entertainment used to be known as World Wrestling Federation, Karas immediately said Hulk Hogan. “I was there at the peak of Hulkamania when I was a kid.” He said that he was also a fan of Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage. “He always cracked me up. I loved that guy” and Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts.
MEAWW asked Karas whether he considered ‘The Main Event’ more of a superhero movie. He said, “It's funny. When I was mapping out what this movie would look like, how it would feel, the story we were telling, you can't help but draw some comparisons to superhero movies. I didn't want to set out to make a superhero movie, but it's definitely undeniable that there are certain tenets of being a superhero that you find here. There's his discovery of the powers. There's sort of testing out the powers in different ways. It sort of adheres to that traditional mythic structure of any hero, whether it's just a superhero or, you know, the old Greek mythological tale of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’. There's a structure of storytelling where we've got our hero.”
But he added, “There are definitely some comparisons to be made to the Marvel world and Spiderman was definitely something that came up in conversation as we were in prep.”
‘The Main Event’ is, above all else, a kids’ movie. Karas says, “I have a seven-year-old son and I wanted to do something that I could watch with him and that he would like. I really enjoyed the process. I knew it was incredibly satisfying to be able to watch this with my wife and my-seven-year old.”
WWE, since last year, has received a lot of negative press. Last year, on HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight’, John Oliver did a segment on the organization’s work-safety policies and work contracts. MEAWW asked Karas if he felt this film, in any way, whitewashed the organization. He said, “I'm an independent director, so I'm not a part of the WWE organization itself. But what I do know from working with everybody from WWE studios and the wrestlers is they were a group of just the nicest, most conscientious people.”
Karas further said, “Everything was very carefully done and treated with delicateness. All these guys were so wonderful to work with. So, I don't get into the politics of anything beyond what my, you know, my job was to make this particular movie. And you know, from my vantage point it was a wonderful organization to work with and everyone that I've encountered from the organization was nothing but a hundred percent professional and safe and conscientious and wonderful to work with.”
“If I can take one thing away from ‘The Main Event’,” said Karas, “It would be that no matter how hard things might get in life, it's always important to just take it all away, strip it all, strip out all the complications and get down to the simple roots of what's at play and figure out how can we work together.”
‘The Main Event’ is scheduled to release on Netflix on April 10, 2020.