Kerry Scott Conran is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for creating and directing the 2004 pulp science fiction film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Early life and influences
Conran was born in Flint, Michigan. He was educated at the California Institute of the Arts. He grew up watching such classic adventure movies and serials as King Kong, Lost Horizon, Metropolis, and Flash Gordon on a local television channel.
He was impressed by the whimsy and imagination of these films. He explained in an interview with John Joseph Adams that the adventure films of the 1930s era were not limited by what was practical, but only by the imaginations of the creators. He stated that he found this element lacking in most modern adventure films, which he described as "almost too well informed... and more cynical". Upon becoming an adult, he entered the California Institute of Arts. Although he was enrolled in a live-action course, he became enamored with the abilities of those in animation courses to create whatever was in their imagination. He realized that they were not bound by such things as practicality or the rules of physics, but only by their imaginations. As a result, he devised the idea of making a film with live actors, but computer-generated backgrounds.
He modeled the tone and visuals of the short on the cinematography in The Third Man, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was filmed, for the most part, entirely on blue-screen, with backgrounds, lighting, and other effects added in post-production. However, due to time and budget constraints, one set was partially built, and another was fully built. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was released in 2004, by Paramount Pictures. but did not do well at the box office.
Afterwards, Conran was slated to direct John Carter of Mars, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars, after having initially turned it down twice. Before production could commence, Sherry Lansing stepped down from Paramount and the studio had lost interest in the project. Conran planned to work on an original project with friend and former schoolmate Robert Gordon. He has stated that he prefers to adapt original material. Conran also worked on the 2012 proof of concept short film Monster Roll, along with Sky Captain collaborators Dan Blank (who directed the short), Eric Adkins, Erik Jessen, and Takashi Takeoka.
Conran at one point was to direct Truckers for DreamWorks Animation before the project was shelved. He was to also collaborate with Sam Raimi on an adaptation of The Shadow and a separate project based on Doc Savage. Sony Pictures, which held the rights to both characters, lost interest in both projects sometime afterwards. Following a string of films that failed to go into production, Conran opted to step away from the limelight, "I decided I was just going to disappear, I'd just do my own stuff, and that's basically what I've been doing. I've not been idle, I've been doing stuff that's more about the experimentation [of Sky Captain]." He is open to making more films and has shown some admiration towards the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In his interview with John Joseph Adams, he stated: "I have always come at this from the perspective of filmmaking and developed the techniques used in this film out of necessity and never really sought to interest other computer aficionados".