
The journey that lead Dylan Sprouse to his new movie The Duel — about two childhood best friends who have a falling out and decide to settle their differences with an 1800s-style shoot-out — began years ago during a game of beer pong.
“I was at a college party, and I played beer pong across from a guy named Justin Matthews, who promptly whooped my ass,” Sprouse tells MovieMaker.
“Then I went on to do a movie called Banana Split up in Syracuse in New York with the American High guys up there. My best friend in that movie was an actor named Luke Roberts. We just stayed friends, stayed in touch, and eventually he reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I just finished writing this script with my writing partner,’ who happened to be Justin Matthews, ‘and could you read it and give me notes?'”
That script was for The Duel. Sprouse opened it right then and there, and what he read convinced him to sign on to the project immediately. Matthews and Roberts became the directors — making their feature directorial debuts — and Sprouse stars alongside Callan McAuliffe, Patrick Warburton, Hart Denton, Denny Love, Ronald Guttman, María Gabriela de Faría, Christian McGaffney, and Rachel Matthews.
The film is also Sprouse’s first time executive producing.
“I messaged him back in the next hour and a half because I zoomed through it, and I said, I need to meet you right now at some bar and we need to talk about this,” he said. “I was like, guys, I really think this script is exceptional. And I want to come on board and making this thing a reality. And so from that moment forward, the three of us kind of got started on putting the pieces together and how to make The Duel a reality.”
The story of The Duel follows Sprouse as Colin, who is challenged to a duel by his best friend Woody (McAuliffe) after Woody finds out that Colin has been sleeping with his girlfriend. Their other best friends Kevin (Denton) and Sam (Love) get roped into the debacle when they meet a dueling enthusiast (Warburton) and are invited to fight to the death at a wealthy drug lord’s palatial estate in what may or may not be Mexico.
Sprouse is known for acting alongside his twin brother, Cole Sprouse, in films and television shows including Disney’s 2005 series The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Adam Sandler’s 1999 comedy Big Daddy. Recently, he’s starred in films including Beautiful Disaster and its sequel, Beautiful Wedding; Tyger, Tyger; After We Collided, My Fake Boyfriend, and The Curse of Turandot.
The Duel arrives in theaters on Wednesday. Below, we ask Sprouse all about executive producing, being a history buff, and what drives his creative passion.
Also Read: The Duel: Dylan Sprouse Is Challenged to an Old-Fashioned Fight for Honor in Exclusive Clip (Video)
Q&A With The Duel EP and Star Dylan Sprouse
Margeaux Sippell: Can you walk me through everything you did as an executive producer?
Dylan Sprouse: I think the title is different for a lot of different people, right? I mean, that’s why there are so many different affixes and prefixes to the producer title. It fits a lot of different roles, but primarily on this title, and with our company in general, I’m looking to facilitate the operations of getting things started and getting things promoted and pushed in the backend.
That’s something for me that I wanted to make very clear in terms of actually sourcing money, I can put people in front of people. That’s another thing producers often do, or they either put up money themselves. That’s not something that I did on this project. But I think that’s another large aspect of production.
My role predominantly in this is, you know, obviously, introing the crew to studios who I think could actually make the project get put out there, organizing, promotional material, marketing, making sure that the project gets off the ground in the front end, putting people together that I think would be good in the movie. A little bit of fingers in all the pots. It’s just kind of management, you could say.
Margeaux Sippell: What drives your creative passion?
Dylan Sprouse: It sounds simple, but I like telling stories, and I like facilitating people telling stories. So I like to shoot the shit with my buddies. I like to take the piss. I like to joke. I like to hear tall tales. These are things that I like personally, and I like to be able to do that in the movie format with the skill set that I’ve learned over all these years. For me, I’m a very on-set guy. So what that means is I don’t really live for the finished product of a movie a lot of the time.
I need to know going in that the experience of shooting it is going to be lovely. If it’s not going to be lovely or if my spider sense is tingling about other people on set being assholes or uncool to work with, I just won’t do a project. I live very much for the experience on set. Now that being said, to break out of that a little bit, I wanted to try my hand at executive producing. So I wanted to be a little more involved in the post this side. I’m really happy that I did break out of my comfort zone a little bit because this experience has just been all around great.
Margeaux Sippell: Did you do a lot of research into the 1800s and dueling culture?
Dylan Sprouse: It’s funny, personally, I didn’t do any research. The truth is that Luke and Justin, who wrote the script, know that I, as well as Callan, who plays apart from me as Woody — the four of us are history buffs in general. That is also why Luke sent me the script originally, because he’s like, I know that you like this kind of stuff, I’m interested in your thoughts on it, whether we properly represent it, and I don’t know anyone else who would be interested in reading about a dueling movie.
I was like, I’m there. I’ll definitely read it. So the impetus to get this movie off the ground started from a love of history. All of the people involved really like history… Luke, Justin, Callan and I are history buffs. So we wanted to make sure we capture the essence of what a duel should be while also harkening back to the famous ones of the time period. And then of course, making the movie just fun to watch.
Margeaux Sippell: What kind of history are you a buff about?
Dylan Sprouse: You name it, I’m kind of a buff about it. I do particularly like Scandinavian history. I find it particularly interesting to me. That’s what I would say I’m mostly a buff about, and the sagas and the Germanic tribes, and obviously Rome a little bit here and there. I like the American Gold Rush history a lot just because I’m a Californian.
But yeah, those are kind of the things that I love very much. Callan and Luke predominantly are naval history guys, they love navy history. And then Justin is a dueling aficionado. So it covers all your bases.
Margeaux Sippell: I’m also curious — there are a lot of discussions in this movie about how things in modern culture aren’t the way they used to be, and how people don’t talk to each other anymore. Do you wish that things were more old fashioned? If you could, would you snap your fingers and take away social media?
Dylan Sprouse: No. It’s funny, because I know buddies who are very much like that. I’m not, because while I am a history buff, I’m also interested in how history modernizes itself, right? That’s something that I very much love. I’m not a sitting on my porch on a rocking chair, grumpy. That’s not my vibe. I do quite like the way that history modernizes. I do find that the like the flow of time into modernity is a really fun aspect that I like to keep tabs on.
I own a meadery, and a lot of the discourse around mead, which is a honey wine, is trying to make it seem like this kind of ren-fair aesthetic. And I’m very much interested in how to make that ancient beverage [appeal] to a modern palate. These, again, are things that I find particularly interesting. So while I don’t really like social media, I also I’m not going to be like, Oh, I wish I could remove it all. That just sounds ridiculous to me, and impossible.
The Duel arrives in select theaters on Wednesday, July 31 from Liongsgate and Grindstone.
Main Image: Dylan Sprouse in The Duel, courtesy of Lionsgate/Grindstone