Producer Charles Roven was scheduled to give interviews for his latest production, The Bank Job, the day after Heath Ledger's death. Roven had recently wrapped production on The Dark Knight, his sequel to Batman Begins and second film with Ledger after The Brothers Grimm. No one would have faulted him for backing out, but Roven came prepared to give the smaller, more intimate heist drama its due, and address sensitive concerns about the Batman sequel.

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CraveOnline: Unfortunately we have to ask about the death of Heath Ledger. Do you expect to have conversations about the Dark Knight marketing, to adjust anything out of sensitivity?

Chuck Roven: I just want to say one thing about Heath Ledger and that'll just sort of sum up everything I want to say about it. He was a good friend of mine both personally and professionally. We did two films together, one of which is The Dark Knight and he was really a great guy and an incredibly brilliant actor. Wherever he is in the universe right now, I hope he's happy. Really anything else you need to know about The Dark Knight right now, you should talk to Warner Brothers about.

CraveOnline: You also have Get Smart, how's that going?

Chuck Roven: Get Smart's been a fantastic experience and making The Dark Knight's been a fantastic experience really.

CraveOnline: Are you actually doing two Get Smarts, with the Bruce and Lloyd spinoff?

Chuck Roven: Yes, Warners is doing that as an ancillary [movie]. It's an interesting thing to see how that works out. I have not really had that much involvement with that but the stars of it are definitely in from Get Smart.

CraveOnline: How is Steve Carell as an action hero?

Chuck Roven: Steve Carell is just, I think he can do anything. I don't know if you've had a chance to see anything on Get Smart but it sort of gives you an idea of what he's capable of if you've seen something. I think that the audiences that have had an opportunity to see the movie in its preview period or research screening preview period have just really enjoyed the movie incredibly. We're really happy about that.

CraveOnline: How important is it to find the smaller stories along with the blockbusters?

Chuck Roven: It's really exciting actually. I love the film medium. I try to have a really diverse filmmaking career as a producer, so I get a tremendous amount of enjoyment in making all kinds of films.

CraveOnline: How much dramatic license can you take with actual events for the sake of the movie?

Chuck Roven: The thing was, we certainly may have moved around the actual timing of some events, like for example the robbery was over a four week period of time in reality. We made it over a weekend. And we maybe compressed some characters or expanded some characters. But the events of the robbery and the events of what was going on criminally, culturally in the UK and particularly in London at that time, that's really what we found. Those shots that you see looking across the street, that's the real bank in Marlibone today. We did the production design to make it look period and have the busses there but that's really a real location. That's exactly where it happened.

CraveOnline: How quickly did the cast come to you?

Chuck Roven: I think there was some major casting that really only happened like a few days before we started shooting because Roger [Donaldson], there were many, many great, wonderful, talented people that met with Roger. He just wanted to take his time and make sure he felt comfortable with ultimately who we all elected to go with.

CraveOnline: Did you want to add a fight scene for Jason Statham?

Chuck Roven: Those events and the culmination of everything happening at the train station at the end, that was definitely part of Roger's work in converting it into a thriller. But it wasn't really designed for Jason. It was more narrative based.

CraveOnline: Since the HAM radio correspondence was so integral to the story, do you have any of those old recordings for the DVD?

Chuck Roven: Yeah, and we found these great old newscasts from even here, Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner reporting on the robbery and the fact that it was a bank and exactly how they got into the bank and the fact that they were the walkie talkie robbers and that it was on the HAM radio operator flipped it over to the police but they couldn't find them. All that, we have those newscasts.

CraveOnline: Since these events are more well known in England, will you make changes to the UK cut of the film?

Chuck Roven: We just felt, in the UK, it's better that they surmise who [a plot point] is and here in the United Sates it may be better. Because they know there was one royal who went to Mustique a lot. Here in the United States, I don't think [they do]. We just felt for exactly that reason that it's better to let audiences who aren't familiar with what the royal situation is in the country and it was very easy. We didn't need to connect the dots so much with the UK audience, but we actually tested the movie in the UK and tested the movie here. That's how we came up with that.

CraveOnline: Have you done the Blu Ray transfer for Bank Job yet?

Chuck Roven: Have not, no. Why, are you a Blu Ray fan?

CraveOnline: Either, but filmmakers are excited about the new formats.

Chuck Roven: Don't you think, kind of now, I think that Blu Ray's kind of won the war. It's like when we had VHS and Betamax and Betamax was the better format and VHS won the battle. I don't really know. I'm okay technically but I just couldn't tell you which one that I would prefer between the two. They're all okay with me.

CraveOnline: Did you ever think of casting American actors?

Chuck Roven: There was no way, no way that Roger would ever, ever, ever consider casting anybody.

CraveOnline: Were there any difficulties shooting in London?

Chuck Roven: It is difficult to get around in London. What you really want to limit is how many times you move during the course of the day. But other than that, I would say that's the biggest. Anything else having to do with that, I think filmmaking in London is really great. This year I've shot in a lot of places. I've shot here and New York and Chicago and Montreal and London and Berlin and Milan and Istanbul and Hong Kong. Isn't that amazing?

CraveOnline: In one year?

Chuck Roven: Yeah. It's pretty amazing. London, the crew, first of all, it's great to be able to speak English. So the crews I think are fantastic. I mean, American crews are great but the English crews are great. It was great shooting in Berlin. The German crews were great and they also happen to speak English almost as well as they speak German. The one thing that the UK has, now Germany has it as well, is this fabulous tax deal. It's just too bad that all the benefits of that are gone because our dollar's so low.

CraveOnline: What's going on with The Flash?

Chuck Roven: You know, we're stuck right now with the writer's strike. We've got a writer, we've got a director, we just gotta wait until the strike's over.