UG: Finland - land of lakes, mosquitos and excellent metal! First of all: What kind of music do you listen to when you aren’t busy? (Or when you are busy?)

Timo: I’m a metalhead, have always been, and enjoy my Pantera, Ministry and – most of all – Type O Negative. But I’m really open to music of all kind, as long as it’s somewhat interesting. Lately I’ve been preparing for next year’s Wacken, so it means I’m going through the announced artists’ catalogue of music. But just before that I was heavily into The Beatles – I basically spent six months in purchasing and meticulously listening to every Beatles recording ever made, and then started expanding to their individual members’ catalogue, but stumbled somewhere during McCartney.

UG: Rumors say that the whole idea about "Iron Sky" was (how fitting) born in a sauna in the finnish outback. How much booze did it take or was there any other inspiration? ;)

Timo: Ideas born drunk usually can’t stand the light of the morning sun, and Iron Sky wasn’t fathered when inebriated. It was after a shooting day of my earlier film Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, and we were already in a pretty happy mood. Sauna brings up good ideas in Finns.

UG: "Iron Sky" was a huge success, especially for non-mainstream cineasts in Germany where a lot of people have a certain interest in (funny) movies about the Third Reich. When was the first idea about planning a sequel?

Timo: I think the original idea for the sequel was first time concepted already before we even had a script for the first one. Reading about the whole Moon Nazi mythos brought us into a collision course of the whole Vril/Hollow Earth mythology, and I always had in mind that if "Iron Sky" succeeds, I want us to go crazier, wilder and more esoteric with the sequel.

UG: So, what’s the story behind the "Coming Race"? I guess it’s hard to make it more awesome than freaking moon nazis raiding the earth!? ;)

Timo: Twenty years ago Earth was bombarded by a nuclear war, which was ignited by the invasion of the Moon Nazis. Now the Moon is falling apart and the only way to save what remains of mankind is to travel to the Hollow Earth and retrieve the Holy Grail. Only thing is that the damn thing is being defended by an ancient race of lizard creatures known as the Vril, who are also responsible of all the madmen of the history – so, in order to accomplish the mission mankind has to face an army of dinosaurs led by such sweet characters as Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Margaret Thatcher and others...

UG: Sounds like a pretty good story for a sequel - Christopher Kirby alias James Washington and Julia Dietze alias Renate Richter survived on the moon base. Will they play a role in the second movie as well? If you don’t want to talk about that yet you can tell us which temperature you prefer in your Sauna! ;)

Timo: Renate Richter has a major role in the story, Washington’s story unfortunately ended already. Guess the harsh Moon environment took the best of him. But luckily he and Renate had a chance to procreate, and the new hero of the "Iron Sky: The Coming Race" was born some 20 years ago.

UG: The first movie was heavily depending on crowdfunding. For the second movie you tried a similar, yet more "serious" way and let shareholders buy shares over Invesdor, a young crowdfunding and investment platform. Within maybe a month you overachieved your goal and ended up with over 500% of the wanted amount. I mean what could possibly go wrong after that or are there yet more (financial/other) obstacles in the process?

Timo: Well, to be realistic, the whole budget of the film is over 10 Million €, and so far we’ve raised the said 500% of our target goal – 250000€ and some 100000€ in an earlier crowd funding campaign via IndieGoGo. We do have obviously very good discussions with distributors and film funds in Germany and in Finland, but there’s going to be a big job for us raising money before the shooting can begin, and one part will be a major crowd funding campaign.
 
UG: Just tell us one secret about "The Coming Race" no fan knows right now! – Come on, just one ;)

Timo: We have Jesus riding a chariot driven by a dinosaur and shooting a gatling gun.

UG: Well, I guess now we officially know too much - awesome! My next visit to Finland will surely be next year – Which beer do you prefer or do you recommend for us Germans? (Besides Karhu, which is my personal all time favorite)

Timo: Finnish beers are not a huge thing around the world, but I too would go for Karhu. Others are reindeer piss, as we call them.

UG: The last traditional question: You got access to a time machine and you are able to visit yourself about 10 years ago. Which advice would you give yourself?

Timo: I don’t think there’s any single bit of advice I could’ve given to myself that would’ve dramatically changed the course of things to come. Just the typical: "stick to what you’re doing, it’s gonna be awesome", but I did it anyway so...

UG: Thanks for your time Timo - we can’t wait to hit the cinemas for "Iron Sky 2: The Coming Race!"
Timo: 2016!

Das Interview führten Grave von Undergrounded und Timo Vuorensola, Regisseur und Ideenstifter von Iron Sky