Back in July after rapping up production for the season 2 finale of "The Challenger" (Dark Triad), Aramis and I were set on continue the legacy of Rick Sledge but the question was... For how long? We decided that Season 3 was going to be the final season and we would end it with three final films. The titles were : Born to Kill, Born to Die & Born to Live... We called it "the born" season. After we got our first cast for film 6 (Born to Kill), we started to film. Due to several reasons, some of the actors and actresses didn't end up finishing filming with us. So after filming about 30% of The Challenger 6, we were back at square one... No cast which equals, no film... So we had this plan to film all three of the "born" films at once. So we began casting. Cynthia Stone was originally casted to play Strike, but due to a month of loss of connection, the role was handed over to Niki Tassioulis. But that was for film 7... Priority one was of course to get film 6 done.... After reconnecting with Cynthia Stone, she was given the role of Holly Rawls. Following the casting of Holly Rawls, the rest of the cast fell into place and the film turned out great... Filming Challenger 6,7 & 8 were planned to be filmed simultaneously, but after reconstructing the cast we decided to scrap the "born trilogy" idea and wrap up the series in just two films.
This discussion happened while Aramis and I were having dinner with Darius Ban (the man who plays Lucas Wolf). Darius said, why drag out the series longer than it's meant to be... Aramis and I already felt that going beyond our original plan of ending the series with The Challenger 5: Dark Triad was already pushing the series further than it's meant to go... But Darius raised a valid point and both Aramis and I agreed. We felt that if we do the "finale" right than 6 films prior would serve their purpose. So we took the scripts for "The Challenger 7: Born to Die" and "The Challenger 8: Born to Live" and put them together into one film. Our first feature film. Other than the fact that we had to trim some of the sharp edges of the script... The story was there and so was the theme. The theme was broken trust and the hope that things will be alright in the end. So we combinded the theme's and came up with the title... "Broken Hope." Next step before getting back on set was to not only cast a few more people, but was to cut the fat out of the two scrips so our feature wouldn't fell dragged on... What we did was, went back and rewatched the first 5 films and realized what worked and what didn't... A lot worked, The Challenger all around character was solid, but the Lawman aspect was too "out there" for our finale. So all 5 scenes the Lawman had in the finale were all cut. Gunnerson is still a vigilante, but since he's unknown and millions of people have the same description we felt that him wearing this mask had no meaning... So we cut the scenes from the script. That was the main aspect of the "Broken Hope" script that needed some fine tuning.
After fixing that, we went onto filming "The Challenger 6" and finishing casting for "The Challenger 7: Broken Hope."Agata Waclawska who was supposed to play Aryne Sky in film 6 was brought on board to be introduced in the finale as the leader of the Irish Mob. She was great in that role, it's a shame we didn't bring her in earlier in the series. This film also say the return of Marc Samuels as the Barracuda... Marc was great in that interrigation scene, you really feel for his character. More new faces that were added are: Daniel Haug as Liam, he was amazing and Gt Laberge as Drax a man with a bow staff that took out a few of The Challengers teeth. Onto the filming... DAY 1 was a long 12 hour day... Niki acted in her first scene as the badass Joesphine Strike, a Vigilante who like the Challenger breaks the law to get the job done. Strike is the female Challenger. She dresses in a red leather jacket, white t-shirt and wears black leather pants. She has loads of confidence, never gives up and most of all has The Challengers back. This film opens up with Sledge and Gunnerson in a stand off, both have guns pointed at each other. Gunnerson believes the Challenger has killed several innocent people, but for the first time... He's wrong. Theres a copy cat Challenger on the loose and Gunnerson is blinded by anger that he can't see that. Strike breaks up this stand off and gets into a debate with The Challenger. The Challenger works alone, but Strike is like an annoying puppy that won't leave you alone... Invetiably they end up working together, when these two are together they seem unstoppable, until Provenzano sends out his army...
Meanwhile Gunnerson has found himself a new partner... Holly Rawls, shes after the copy-cat Challenger and insists Gunnerson works with her. They team up, but Holly has some other motives... Our biggest filming day was on a hot summer day in August.... 14 hours in the sun and in the shade. We started the day by filming all of Justin Moses (Mr. Black)'s scenes for "The Challenger 6" followed by all of his scenes for "The Challenger 7." We wrapped all 30 pages of footage that Justin was in in just 8 little hours. Two films in one day and he was amazing in both. Later on that day we filmed one of my personal favorite scenes, the one where The Challenger meets Giovanni Ricci (Adam Bossio) for the first time. Adam was amazing as Ricci, he was tough and confident something the Ricci prior lacked... But they were different characters. This was the most badass Challenger scene to date. Ricci shoots him and thinks he has won... But " You hit the ground 7 times... You get up 8." The Challenger roars back, cigar in hand and well... Watch the film for the rest. That day we also filmed Antonio Ricci's (Dino Mazza) return in a flahback, it was a really good scene between Giovanni and Antonio. It's one to remember.
At the 30 minute mark of this film, be prepared for the biggest twist of the series... A hero falls once again. You will not see this coming, it's one of the highlights of the series and a spoiler free hint is that both Sledge and Gunnerson are in the scene. From that scene onwards its all about the hunt for the big crime boss, Provenzano (Angelo Di Pardo), which leads to the final showdown... Provenzano was our most clever villain. He's been around since "The Challenger 2: Unlimited," but no one knew he was the boss. He hide in the shadows away from the lime light and not even The Challenger knew he was around until film 6. All things must come to a close in the series finale...That includes the full story of The CHALLENGER's ORIGIN. We will take you back to 2005, to a point where everything was sunshine and rainbows for Rick Sledge. He had his girlfriend, Brooklyn Astor (Cassandra Potenza) a job as a detective. But it was about to go from heaven on earth to hell when Lucas Wolf makes his return to LA. That flashback sequence is like a film within a film and is one of my favorite points of the film.
As for the original cast members... For me it was important to at least have one scene by every original cast member who was there when we began... So Mike Covello has a cameo as Mora, Dino Mazza has one as Antonio Ricci Jr and Chika Mafiana makes his return as Walker for the first time since film 5. Each and every cameo has a significant meaning and reason for why it's in the film... Weather it's loss, regret or a reminder of what everyones fighting for theres a reason.
After wrapping filming in August, Aramis Pacitto edited the film... It turned out great! But there were audio issues... Thats where Varia Sound comes in. We met this man named Vito Sundano and his nephew Nicola Sundano and we agreed to work on The Challenger audio together. From August until Christmas, we were hard at work... Each and every week we went to Varia studios and worked and worked at the audio, bringing levels that were dead, to being back alive to adding reverb, echo to where needed and much much much more... It was harder than writing, acting and filming. I can't speak for the editing talk to Mr. Pacitto about that. It was tough, but it was what we needed to do. About a month and a half into the audio editing, Nicola dropped out of the project for scheduling reasons. So it went from 4 to 3. Aramis, me and Vito. One day out of all the five months we spent on audio that stands out to me, was the day where we had to make the break noise... There was a scene where Ms. Sky was talking to Provenzano on the phone and the driver slammed the break so the car rocked back and forth and stopped. This was right before The Challenger ripped the driver out of the car. So we spent 5 hours coming up with that one sound. We mixed and recorded several different car noises until we eventually got it. That was the toughest Challenge we faced and it was just for a 7 second noise. It was tough, but worth while. This film will have clearer sound than we've ever had before. Watch out for this film when it hits the web on January 30... You won't want to miss the FINAL Challenge.
- Andrew Di Pardo
