Elton John and David Furnish knew that Gnomeo And Juliet would be a success on reading the title, the pair admit in our video interview.
“We saw the title and immediately thought ‘this has got to be a winner’ because it gave us the opportunity to take the greatest love story ever told and flip it on its head and have a lot of crazy fun with it by telling it with garden gnomes,” admits David.
“That’s what appealed to us about the whole thing; it was just so far off,” explains Elton. “You’ve got the greatest playwright and author ever, and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got garden gnomes. And so, that’s what appealed to us. That you could have fun with this and keep the story intact, except maybe change the ending, which we did.”
But Elton also thinks it’s the cast that makes the movie so great. “The two leads are great – James McAvoy and Emily Blunt,” says Elton, “And it’s got Richard Wilson, it’s got Julie Walters, it’s got Jason Statham, Stephen Merchant and Matt Lucas, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
While they’ve been promoting the film seriously, they also admit that they came away from the film talking in silly voices.
“Nanette the Frog really makes me laugh so much, she’s brilliant,” Elton says, admitting he and his partner David Furnish have taken on the bird character from the movie. “I’m really getting used to Featherstone, we’re talking in Featherstone language all the time now. We came away from the premiere talking just like Featherstone.”
