‘The Iron Claw’ Movie Takes a Unique Approach By Filming Full Matches

‘The Iron Claw’ is a film about the rise and fall of the legendary Von Erich family, who made huge impact on the sport of professional wrestling in the 1960s. The film is set to star Zac Efron, who will play Kevin Von Erich in the movie. To add authenticity to the film, it has now been released that the film featured actual full-length wrestling matches.

The first trailer for the film was released earlier this year and it showed Zac Efron looking absolutely jacked as he was running the ropes, among other things. Naturally, the film is expected to be an emotional roller coaster in a big way.

In contrast to the conventional approach of using only selected segments in wrestling productions, the upcoming A24 biopic on the Von Erich family, titled opted for a more traditional method. Rather than relying solely on finalized sequences, the production team took an old-school approach to recreate the wrestling scenes.

Former WWE Superstar Chavo Guerrero has become a prominent figure in the entertainment world for bringing authenticity to wrestling portrayals. He previously contributed to wrestling-based series such as GLOW and Young Rock and he was a huge part of ‘The Iron Claw’ as well.

While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Chavo Guerrero described the gruelling process the Hollywood stars had to endure throughout the filming process, as they wrestled multiple full-length matches instead of cutting corners.

“In The Iron Claw, we filmed entire matches. Sean Durkin, the director, really wanted to get the feel of a real match, and then pick and choose what he wanted. There are other productions that I’m shooting like 30 seconds, or 10 seconds or sometimes they want one move. But Sean wanted these wrestling sequences. So, if you see one of the opening matches, that happens to be me and Zac [Efron], that’s probably a 10 to 12-minute match. And we film that probably 10 or 15 times. So I tell the actors sometimes this is easier than what we do in WWE.

But sometimes it’s much harder. Because give me 20 minutes in a match at WrestleMania, great, let’s do it on a pay-per-view. But I’m 20 minutes and I’m done. I go you’re doing this three to four to five or 10-minute match 10 to 15 times, you’re doing it over four hours, and then you’re taking a break to go to lunch and you’re coming back and filming it again.

So it’s very difficult. By the end of a couple of those matches that Zac had, he was spent. You couldn’t tell in the match. But afterwards, he even came to me. He goes, Man, this is may be one of the hardest days I’ve ever had on set. This is really hard. Well, yeah.”

This film is scheduled to hit theaters on Friday, December 22, with future streaming availability on MAX. It remains to be seen whether it will end up being a critical and commercial success in the end.

What do you think of ‘The Iron Claw’ cast working full-length matches for the movie? Are you looking forward to watching the film as well? Sound off in the comments section below!

Transcription by Ringside News