A film of this scale requires a staggering amount of hard work, and for the director, the upcoming release date is the culmination of years spent developing the project.  "I'd say this film was two to three years, two years maybe," Singh said. "But a lot of it was just trying to figure out where the script was going to do because I kind of decided on a style before I decided on the film. I just said, 'Action flick. They want sword and sandals. I'd like to do a renaissance style painting. One happens to be Greek. It doesn't matter to me. The story of Theseus is mixed with Gods. Theseus had nothing to do with the Gods in the original,' and so all ready you're waiting for a bashing. I just said, 'Go with that choice,' and started with that. I'd say two and a half years."

Based on his previous work in features and commercials, Singh has developed a reputation as a meticulous creator of wholly unique visuals.  By the time he was ready to being casting, the director had very concrete concepts regarding the world of Immortals, and his confidence impressed Cavill, who explained, "He basically had an idea of what he wanted and that in itself, when you walk into a room and you have a director who’s actually genuinely in charge of what he wants, you feel safe. You think okay, great, I want to be a part of this because I know no matter what, I’m going to get to do my bit, and you’re going to do your bit and we’re going to work together, as opposed to it being, 'Well, we don’t really know what we’re doing but it’s kind of like this and therefore you’ll fit in here somewhere but we might change a lot of stuff up.'"

Freida Pinto was similarly impressed by her initial contact with Singh, saying, "When I met Tarsem for the first time I had no idea what we were going to do. What was amazing about the way that Tarsem put it was, like, I read the script and it was really more of a draft and was being developed. I told Tarsem, like, 'How do you want me to roll my eyes back? How am I going to do that? It sounds a bit strange as written in the script.' He said, 'When we come to set we're going to put the script aside and we're just going to let the visuals take over.' So, even though I play the virgin oracle it's not like in 300 where it's all dreamy and dance-y and then she dies. It's really not like that. It feels more human in a way."

Singh's approach to both creating the visuals and crafting the story was refreshingly collaborative for the leading man.  "It was an organic process," Cavill said. "That in itself is the nature of these things. When you’re dealing with creative minds, it should be organic and it should have the opportunity to evolve as necessary. Working with someone like Tarsem and other actors like Luke, it makes it a wonderful process and exciting and interesting."

"Working with Tarsem is really special," Luke Evans agreed. "The guy is a wonderful human being and invests a lot of energy and passion both off-screen and on-screen. He's just a really great person, so that was a wonderful thing to get in touch with him too."

"The main reason I took the movie was to work with Tarsem," Rourke related with his signature forthright confidence. "I saw his commercial reel and I saw the interesting Nike reel he did where he had the faces on all the athletes. The masks. I saw, he brought some drawings of the different characters. I thought this guy is very prepared, you know. And I like working with guys who do a very long pre-production because they know exactly what they want. And because he comes out of commercials, he has such a fabulous look the way he lights everything. He can take this material to another level."

"Working with Tarsem and Henry, Henry’s very young, enthusiastic," Rourke continued. "He was running around doing push ups and cartwheels. I remember when I used to get that excited. Maybe he’d better work on his lines. No. But it’s nice to work with someone who’s beginning their career, seeing them so gung-ho. Tarsem was excited. It was a very good."

The style and story of Immortals are distinctive, and are the result of cutting-edge technology applied to forward-thinking visuals, all built around a narrative structure that mines Greek myths for relevant elements, while not being beholden to the conventions of those ancient stories.  "Literature is great," Singh said. "Go read it, but this is an action flick and what happens to get stuff green lit right now happens to be Greek and not your renaissance style. I said, 'Well, I'll mix it up.' So, if you look at the renaissance stuff, the way that they kind of dressed most of their gods while trying to make them Greek is not at all true to the Greek style either."

"The Greek style tended to be so much more hieroglyphic," he elaborated. "And so much more different than when the renaissance came along. They contemporarized their guys. What the gods look like is usually in a forty year old man's face and the boyfriend's body on it. I just think right now when I look at it I say, 'I just can't really deal with that because I want these guys to have action and I don't want faces from somebody else.' So, I just make all the gods young. So, it's just a different answer. I look at the literature stuff and purposely ignore it."

While moviegoing audiences are no doubt more accustomed to cinematic deities with long beards and twinkles in their eyes, the gods in this film are idealized physical specimens, eternal beings living forever in a state of perfection.  This aesthetic choice is demonstrative of the original thinking applied to these characters, and Singh explained the reasoning behind it.  "The philosophical answer that I went with was if you want to live forever would you want to look like Mickey or Henry (Cavill) forever if you had to live and you had to have a physical appearance what do you want to live as?"  He concluded, "So, philosophically I agreed with and there's a lot of stuff in Greek literature that usually when you're reading it makes a lot more sense than if you're seeing it visually."

Evans, for one, was surprised by this idea, and didn't expect to be playing Zeus.  "I think in a movie like this, on paper it can sometimes be a little bit too much to swallow," he said. "You’re thinking, 'Wow.' Then like Henry said, you meet Tarsem and he has all the answers. For me, when he told me that he wanted me to play Zeus, I was like, 'That’s always been played by an old man, like Laurence Olivier or Liam Neeson.' He convinced me, he said, 'No, you can do this. This is a new take.' And you just go okay, I surrender, I’ll follow you and you’ll lead me. That’s what we had to do in this film."

The visual philosophy also demanded that the actors, not just those playing gods, be in ridiculously physical shape, and word was that Cavill prepared rigorously, training for six months straight. "Yeah, six months of work," he confirmed. "Due to the nature of the training, from a very talented martial artist called Roger Yuan, part of the training was about flexibility as well because due to the nature of martial arts, you’re going to need flexibility. With all the fight sequences and everything, it was essential to do all the stretching beforehand. Otherwise you would have ended up pulling stuff and doing damage to muscles. So therefore, during shooting, I was prepared if I did sustain any minor injuries, they healed quickly and I did not sustain any major injuries, for the official answer."

Evans' preparation was not quite as extensive, but still rigorous, as he said, "I trained for seven weeks and I had to do it in fast-paced training. I didn’t have long and it makes you stand differently. You look yourself in the mirror and you look different. I saw my body change in seven weeks. It does definitely do something to inform your character in a sort of subliminal way. It definitely had an effect for me."

The discipline required to obtain the right look translated into Cavill's performance.  "It’s like wearing a permanent costume," he explained. "No really, before work when you look in the mirror, or even before looking in the mirror you do feel different. A part of the character is more expressive in you and so when you’re in that kind of shape, I essentially was wearing my costume because I barely had a costume."

"Anything physical, it’s all about the prep anyway," he continued. "You may see the guy in the UFC ring fighting and it may seem effortless, his abilities, his kicks, his punches, whatever, but it’s actually the years of training beforehand where the real work is."

"Yeah, I think that training was pretty intensive," agreed Isabel Lucas, who, as Athena, participates in a show-stopping action sequence. "But Tarsem will tell you that it wasn't all me. I did learn the whole choreographed fight sequence, but we did have a stunt double and she was incredible. It was all martial arts and fighting. It was actually quite difficult in that tight costume. While the costumes were amazing and helped one really embody the character, it was also limiting physically, restrictive."

Similar to his current job playing Superman, Cavill faced a daunting task playing a Theseus, a character who has endured for thousands of years, but he created his take on the mythological figure just as he would with another character, saying,"You've got to go, okay, 'I'm playing a role.' And if you approach it any differently from playing any other role -- and I'm talking from the place of we approach any role with the same kind of dedication no matter what -- if you approach it any differently than any other role then you're not going to do a good enough job. Because you'll be worried about what everyone is thinking about everything as opposed to just acting. Which is what it is."

"It's just a role at the end of the day," Evans explained of playing Zeus. "It's what we do for a living. When you see it on the screen you're like, 'Wow,' you're overwhelmed by the role that you've played. But at the end of the day it's a role and you approach it as a new challenge, as a new role."

For Singh, his first 3D film may have seemed a particularly imposing challenge, but he explains his take on the technology with characteristic confidence, saying, "It's just a technical thing. It's a cart that doesn't necessarily ever have to be put in front of the horse which happens in a lot of cases, but there are certain styles that lend themselves to 3-D. Mine just happens to be quite archaic."

"I just think anything from [Tim] Burton to my stuff and lets say, not Paul Greengrass whose stuff I love, but handheld stuff, shaky stuff is not made for 3D," he explained. "So, my style lends itself to it because I don't like fast cutting stuff. I like slow moving and static stuff. So, 3-D helps you see that more, and then once you go into it I think I asked very clearly, like, 'It's not a movie that you'll be able to convert later without telling me because I will pull the house down.' They said, 'No. It's a 3-D movie.' So, all we did was learn the technology. It's 101. It's very simple stuff. It's not that big, but it's just that certain styles are not made for it. I think that somebody like Burton's or anyone with that style, it just lends itself to it."

The resulting visual spectacle that is Immortals speaks for itself, but Rourke opined, "I thought Tarsem did a hell of a job. It’s a wild looking two hours of something you can escape to and go, ‘Wow. That’s different.’"

Immortals, which also stars Kellan Lutz, John Hurt, Stephen Dorff, Peter Stebbings, Anne-Day Jones, Joseph Morgan, and Daniel Sharman, arrives in theaters this Friday, November 11th.

To watch our exclusive interview with Stephen Dorff about his role in Immortals, please click here. 

Full Disclosure: Immortals was produced by Relativity Media, iamRogue's parent company.