Marc Provissiero’s first ever job was serving ice cream at a shop in the Merchant’s Walk shopping mall in Marietta. He was 14 years old, and he lasted about one week.
“I just don’t think I was very good,” he said. “I don’t think my heart was in it.”
The Georgia native eventually found a career more suited to his talents than scooping ice cream. Provissiero runs Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment alongside Naomi Odenkirk, the wife of actor Bob Odenkirk. He has produced TV shows and films such as “PEN15,” “No Hard Feelings,” and more recently, “Nobody 2.”
“Nobody 2” is the sequel to 2021’s “Nobody,” which starred Bob Odenkirk as Hutch, a former-assassin turned mild-mannered family man who gets sucked back into his former, violent life. The sequel sees Hutch and his family going on vacation – a test for Hutch as he tries to leave work at home and just enjoy himself. A crime lord (Sharon Stone) and a crooked cop (Colin Hanks) have other plans.
Ahead of an Aug. 7 screening of the film, Rough Draft Atlanta spoke to Provissiero about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know that “Nobody” came out of a personal experience that Bob Odenkirk had with a home invasion. That’s really interesting, because for an action movie, it gives that movie a real emotional place to start from. Where did the idea for this sequel come from and when did you guys decide that you wanted to go ahead and make a sequel?
Marc Provissiero: Universal was excited about making a sequel by the first weekend. It did really well. It was a COVID movie, so, you know – it was every three seats. But it still did really well. It was the only movie in the world that weekend, when it opened. Even though it only got to $55 million, it has incredible pay-per-view business. So they were clear out the gate.
It took us a while to figure out a story. It was really difficult. The first movie is about the genie coming out of the bottle, right? He’s just a regular, beaten down guy, family guy, and then you learn about this special set of skills. Now that the genie is out of the bottle – I mean, we must have spent six months on, do you shove it back in, or just go with what is? And if you go with the new normal, then what does that look like? How do you pull off the value of the first movie where you were just following this family … and the intimate, small problems of being a beaten down guy and the mundacity of life? How do you do that if he’s basically a superhero?
Family vacation was what we came up with, to try to propel it, move it forward. We settled on work/life balance as a theme. He’s going on vacation. What are the things spouses say to each other, commonly, when they’re going on vacation with the kids? Leave your work at home, please. Of course, heightened. What he does for work brings the entertainment value to it.
Speaking about the reaction to the first one – I’ve read interviews with Bob specifically where he talks about being a little nervous that people wouldn’t take to the idea of him as an action star. Is there anything about the reaction to the first one that surprised you in any way, or were you surprised how well people took to it?
Provissiero: You know, it would be easier to say yes. The genesis of this whole thing really started with Bob and I becoming aware that there was a global acceptance of and connection to the character he was playing on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” Those shows had global footprints, and they weren’t fully registering on the film side. But Bob was not a film actor. He wasn’t getting cast in anything, let alone a studio film – certainly not a lead. But his brother-in-law was in a factory in the middle of China, and he heard the factory workers talking about a show. They were talking about “Better Call Saul.” When he got back, we were talking about it – the Chinese data, we didn’t have, because they pirate a lot of [shows]. So no one knew this. We just started talking about, what type of genre could you put Bob in where studios might give him a chance? Horror and action are the safest genres that have pretty good international reach, and neither of us watch horror. So we just said, let’s do action.
We knew that there was an audience. Then we were interviewing international directors to direct our first film, one of whom being [“Nobody” director] Ilya Naishuller – I remember these guys in Israel we were interviewing, and this guy in Russia – they were all like, mad Bob and “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad” fans. It continued to give us confidence that there was something to this.
Separately, Bob trained for two years for that role – infamously, two years. No one does that. Actors train for a week or two weeks, or three weeks at most, leading into it. But we knew that to provide the value that was worth buying a ticket to go see Bob, Saul Goodman, punch people – Bob felt very strongly that you couldn’t do the cutaways … where everything’s cut, and you have no idea if it’s a stunt guy or the actor. We needed long takes where you could see that Bob was actually the guy getting punched and punching, and doing it well at a certain skill level. We knew that we were offering something that was going to be satisfying if people showed up.
You talk about him making a transition to film, and that makes me really think about “Little Women” as a strange turning point of sorts. I remember my reaction when he showed up in that movie, and it was a huge surprise. That particular character is not necessarily what you might associate him with, but it immediately clicked. That’s a good representation of him being able to take on things that are surprising.
Provissiero: He loves to do that. He refuses to be identified in one category. He started off in comedy, as is well documented. He’s a comedy writer on “SNL” and such. “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” was something no one ever saw coming – including Bob, actually. Now we’ve done action. He loved doing “Little Women.” We’ve been talking about the next film or two that he does – they’re not going to be action, because he doesn’t want to be thought of in just one way.
You started out as a literary agent. Can you talk about moving into the producing space and the challenges of taking on that new role over the past 10 years or so?
Provissiero: I was an agent for 10 years. Prior to that, I’d had a couple careers in sales. So I got to this business late, relatively speaking. Most people starting off are coming right out of college. I was like 28, 29 when I got into it. I knew I was good in sales. I did very well with whatever I was selling in medical sales, or computers, or whatever. I just was bored with it all, and I learned about the entertainment business living in Los Angeles, in Manhattan Beach. I said, wow – selling make-believe. That could be fun. I could do that for a long time. What do they call it, a salesman? An agent, or a manager? How do I do that? You’ve just gotta be a secretary and answer someone’s phone. Okay. So that’s what I did.
I quit my job and became an assistant at an agency. It was a teeny literary agency, so that’s where I gained my training. That worked out really well. I ended up … at William Morris, and then I kept on getting more drawn to the ideas. I always agented in a way that was very close – I was very close with the clients, and people would always say, “You should be a manager.” Finally, I agreed with them. I quit William Morris and started a management production company [called Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment] where you can also produce along with your clients when they want you to. We manage clients, and in most cases, we’re strictly their manager. When they want us to produce, and it makes sense – we’re of value – then we do so. In this case, I’m blessed that Bob has always invited me to be his producing partner on many projects, including the genesis of this one.
There are some new faces in this movie, and also behind the camera as well. Can you talk about getting some of those new people on board, like Sharon Stone and director Timo Tjahjanto?
Provissiero: One thing Bob and I wanted to bring into the space – since we don’t come from action, neither of us. We both are from comedy, me as a representative, Bob as an artist, writer, performer. We didn’t know the go-to list for action people in the space. We partnered with a company that helped us masterfully with the stunts – David Leitch and Kelly McCormick – and they provided such value for us to handle the things that we knew absolutely nothing about.
But one thing Bob and I were really dedicated to was bringing an inspiring filmmaker/auteur to the action space for our films. One thing that we believe distinguishes “Nobody” and the other films that we’re making from the action genre is we’re interested in a filmmaker – someone who is a festival filmmaker, who also can direct action. So we found, for the first one, Ilya Naishuller, who had made this single point-of-view film called “Hardcore Henry,” where the whole film was shot from a camera on the helmet of the lead actor. You never saw the lead actor. It was just a badass film. You just saw such a voice in Ilya’s filmmaking. We were very drawn to that, and felt strongly about him being the person, setting aside whatever the list was that I was presented.
For this film, it was the same exercise. Bob and I felt strongly about finding someone who really needed and wanted to do this, and who was going to bring their own voice to it. I remember the second wave of ideas that [WME] sent us, they compelled me to watch Timo Tjahjanto’s film “The Night Comes for Us.” I watched it that night, and I called Bob the next day. I said, “Here’s our guy.” He watched it. He said, “That’s the guy.”
That was it, really, and then we had to make a case to everyone else. [Tjahjanto] had a good, successful pitch meeting with us, and then with the studio. It was absolutely clear that he was motivated to have his first U.S. studio film be a success. He’d never done one. He brought such specificity, and different choices and different visions, and made it a very simple, yet very unique film separate from the first one. I think you’d agree, if you saw it.
Yeah, the first one has more of a slow build, I would say. And this one – I wasn’t totally surprised, because it’s a sequel, but it really starts right out of the gate.
Provissiero: And that was Timo. We actually debated him on that, because that was breaking from the first one.
Right. I feel like the first one, it takes so long. You’re kind of waiting for him to snap, for lack of a better term.
Provissiero: Yeah, Timo just said: No. I want this action sequence literally when you’re beginning the movie. We were debating – is that too much action? Are people going to be desensitized? Is it too many action scenes? But he just knew.
I always ask people who are from here and don’t live here anymore – it’s always interesting for me, being from here, watching the film industry here grow and having watched it explode over the past two decades. How have you experienced that growth?
Provissiero: Unexpected is an understatement. We had no idea that that was going to happen in Atlanta. No idea. I would have just stayed here. [Laughs] It’s a lot less expensive. I’m thrilled about it.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Warner Bros. gave a list of potential directors for “Nobody 2” to Provissiero. This article has been updated to reflect that it was actually WME.