From the opening seconds of the first episode of HBO’s “Entourage” in 2004, viewers followed driver/errand boy Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) as he exited his bright yellow Hummer and strode distractedly through a sprinkling of Hollywood hotties into a hip Melrose Avenue restaurant, where he joined his homeboys from Queens, New York: the quartet’s de facto leader, up-and-coming movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier); former pizza boy-cum-talent manager, Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly); and Vince’s half-brother, out-of-work C-list actor Johnny “Drama” Chase (Kevin Dillon).
Cut to 2015 and, with nothing but blue skies and bright sun overhead, Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Entourage” opens on the familiar trio of manager-cum-movie producer Eric, drive-cum-tequila mogul Turtle, and still sometime working actor Drama. But this time they’re navigating the wide-open sea in a speed boat, their destination a huge luxury yacht off the coast of Ibiza, where Vince, rising actor-turned-megastar, “mourns” the demise of his five-day marriage, surrounded by 200 or so of his closest acquaintances…mainly of the scantily clad female variety. But it wouldn’t be a party without his boys, and clearly the party is back on.
The key to making the series transition into a feature film was to have the core cast from the series back together and, in classic “Entourage” fashion, to have as many guest stars and celebrity cameos as possible.
“If any one of us had said we didn’t want to do it, the movie wouldn’t have happened,” Adrian Grenier, who plays Vince, candidly states. “But of course we all wanted to do it. We knew we’d have a great time and were excited about it, and we also wanted to give fans, old and new, even more—more famous people, more toys and more hot girls. Basically, the ‘Entourage’ Hollywood lifestyle in all its glory, experienced through the eyes of these lifelong friends.”
With curious onlookers lining the streets of Los Angeles during the film’s production, and real stars and athletes clamoring for a chance to have a cameo, the job of making the movie mirrored the very lifestyle the characters enjoy, and made each day on set as unpredictable as ever.
Kevin Connolly says, “We’ve always had so much fun working together, it almost feels wrong to call it work. So it didn’t take long to get back into the groove with everybody; we all just kind of clicked back together, almost on the spot. Even though it had been a couple of years, it really just felt like an extended hiatus, and with Doug at the helm it was easy to step back into being these guys.”
As über agent-turned-studio head Ari Gold, Jeremy Piven, who essentially plays the fifth man in this tight-knit family of friends, observes, “I really think everything works in the movie, just as it did in the series, because everything Doug Ellin writes comes from these characters’ core motivations. Doug knows exactly what the audience wants to see; he chums the waters perfectly, but he never jumps the shark.”
In “Entourage,” movie star Vincent Chase (Grenier), together with his boys, Eric (Connolly), Turtle (Ferrara) and Johnny (Dillon), are back…and back in business with super agent-turned-studio head Ari Gold (Piven). Some of their ambitions have changed, but the bond between them remains strong as they navigate the capricious and often cutthroat world of Hollywood.
Opening across the Philippines on June 10, 2015, “Entourage” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
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