We’re finishing up our coverage of Comic-Con 2010 with the press conference for The Others Guys, a buddy cop comedy starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Dwayne Johnson, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers) co-wrote and directed.

But first, Columbia Pictures is running a voting contest on Facebook to bring the red carpet premiere to the winning city.  The field has already narrowed from 25 to 10 and then to 5 (poor Austin missed the cut), but click over and vote for your favorite.  The final five are Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis or, if you’re not partial to one, just click Dallas.  The winner will be announced August 2.

Ok, back to Comic-Con, where McKay, Ferrell, Wahlberg, and Mendes took questions at the press conference:

How much of the movie was improvised?  What percentage would you say…?

McKay: We have to, for our bond company, we actually have to give them the exact percentages.  We brought in an actuary and broke it down.  This movie was 14.3789% improvised, and the rest was scripted.

Ferrell: That would be 86… 85%  Roughly.  Yeah, if you round up.

McKay: You know, that’s actually somewhat of a serious answer.  Probably abut 15-20% was improvised because we goof around within the scenes, but the overall story structure roughly stays the same.

With respect to buddy capers, obviously if you were improvising you had Will Ferrell who is a master of improvisation, how much did you (Wahlberg) learn from him on set?

Wahlberg: I think it was the other way around, actually.

Ferrell: It’s true.

Wahlberg: I think he couldn’t handle all the curveballs I was throwing at him.

Ferrell: No, it really is kind of the same approach.  In terms of… whether it’s a drama or comedy.  We both just had the same philosophy: treat the characters as if it’s real.  Be earnest in every moment and we’re never winking at the camera.  So within that it was, because we had the same philosophy, it was very easy to improvise with each other. >> Read More