LOS ANGELES — John Stagliano told XBIZ he has completed more than three quarters of the principal photography for what will be the second and third full seasons of his episodic, vampire thriller, “Voracious.”
The Evil Angel founder and director so far has shot seven full days of “Voracious” in San Francisco and another day-and-a-half in L.A., with plans to shoot at least another three days this summer at various locations in and around Budapest, Hungary.
Italian superstar Rocco Siffredi has returned to reprise his role as Vlad, while several new performers have joined the production, including Stoya, the Digital Playground exclusive whom Stagliano got special permission to shoot.
Stagliano said that he has been flirting with the idea of shooting Stoya for many years.
“She looks like such an intriguing person,” he said. “What I did with her and James Deen is one of my favorite romance things I’ve ever created in a movie and maybe the best, chemistry wise. It works extremely well. I saw James Deen kissing Stoya at the Circle Bar at the Venetian [in Las Vegas] three years ago and I said, ‘I’d like to put that in a movie.’”
Lea Lexis, another original cast member who co-wrote the Season One screenplay with Stagliano and co-produced the first season's Budapest shoots, has also returned as a performer and producer as well.
“She actually did the line producing work, the locations and paying people. She made story suggestions. She was involved in every aspect of production,” Stagliano explained. “I felt more like a director asking for permission to do stuff from the producer. I was still the executive producer, I funded it. But she is an ambitious person who wants to do more things and she’s quite capable. She also does her silk aerials in this movie. Her and Stoya do aerial stuff together in a girl/girl scene.”
The new cast features additional performances by Chastity Lynn, Ashley Fires, Jessie Volt, Roxy Raye, Rain DeGrey, Wolf Hudson and Deviant Kade.
The lead actress of “Voracious: Season One,” Brooklyn Lee, had planned to return in a non-sex role as Amira, but she changed her mind before the shoot began. The 2013 XBIZ Female Performer of the Year announced her retirement from porn in May, but she did intend to do the “Voracious” sequel as her last project.
“Brooklyn decided not to reprise her role, even though it was only dialogue and a little bit of oral stuff with a rubber crucifix,” Stagliano said. “So I rewrote that part last minute. Brooklyn was never the lead and she wasn’t doing sex. She was a complimentary figure that keyed certain things. She was hiding out in a convent was the story idea. Both Lea and Chastity Lynn got more time because of that and they did very well with it.”
Evil Angel rolled out the first season of “Voracious” in a series of 10 webisodes on EvilAngel.com. Then it released the entire first season on DVD in September. Stagliano is planning a similar release format for the next two seasons.
“Getting this thing edited is going to take a while,” he admitted. “It’s probably going to take until the Fall at the earliest. We’re probably going to release this in episodes starting at the end of September. We’re not sure. I’d like to put it out to more places on the Internet, unless my partners at Evil Angel can convince me otherwise. It’s still up in the air.”
Stagliano projects the DVD set of Season Two would be released in time for the annual industry trade shows in January 2014, and then the Season Three DVD will hit the streets in either May or September 2014.
“I fully don’t expect to make much money on this movie. I spent too much,” Stagliano said. “For all I know I have three movies here, and I still need to shoot three more sex scenes and dialogue. I think I have two six-hour movies and I have no idea what this means. I don’t know how to make a movie anymore. I just keep going, like a 1500-page novel. This one had to be bigger. It had Rocco in it. I had an obligation to Lea Lexis who was a producer on it and she also did aerial stuff. I had Stoya with permission from Digital Playground. I had James Deen doing a big role. I had all these huge celebrity porno people.”
Stagliano said Season Two will pick up where Season One left off.
“It’s a direct continuation of what happened in the last movie,” he revealed. “In fact if I go to Europe and shoot what I’m planning on shooting this summer, it will start from the moment that Vlad the Enforcer has been killed. It will start right from the moment when the police picture is taken and the body has disappeared from the morgue. We’ll find out why the body has disappeared from the morgue.”
He said that Siffredi, who has been a fixture in all of Stagliano’s major features, is “in great shape.”
“He’s been doing yoga and he’s phenomenal in this movie,” Stagliano said. “He’s the best performer to work with—ever. He’s so professional and good.”
Perennial top performer Manuel Ferrara, who delivered memorable scenes as the lead in Season One, so far is not in the sequel. However that still could change with the European dates looming, the director allowed.
“It becomes more difficult to put Manuel in because of the lack of Brooklyn. If I can figure out a way...” Stagliano said. “Wolf Hudson has a pretty big part, and Deviant Kade and Ashley Fires who’s amazing and a way underrated performer. Then I have Roxy Raye, who works for Jay Sin and has done double fisting for Kink. She’s a cute, wholesome, Midwest girl. Putting her together with Rocco turned out to be phenomenal.”
He added that pro domme Rain DeGrey, well known at Evil Angel for her work in Joey Silvera’s strap-on movies, “was an amazing Mother Superior.”
Stagliano also raved about Chastity Lynn, whom he said “had a hard part and she was incredible.”
“She can really act and she was perfectly cast for this role. Also Roxy Raye was a big surprise—how good she could be as a domme,” he noted.
Stagliano said he shot the movie mostly with his compact Panasonic 920 camera because he likes the functionality and movement he gets from it.
“Fundamentally, it’s about story and generally knowing what shots to get to tell your story,” he continued. “You can get lots of angles and interesting coverage and that’s what I was loving doing in making this movie. The fundamental thing is that you have to be erotic. That’s what I was trying to do, better erotic storytelling. The reason why this was made was I made the last movie, and I could see all the mistakes I made and wanted to do better. So I couldn’t stand not making this one.”
Like the first season, he employed heavily fetish-driven themes throughout the new sexual scenarios.
“It’s pretty rough sex,” Stagliano said. “We shot at [the Kink armory] and utilized some of their props and sets. It’s not hardcore S&M, it’s more geared toward sex, but it’s a movie with ideas in it that will probably exclude it from the soft market.”
He also noted that Evil Angel general manager Christian Mann helped write his own part—as a security guard—in the upcoming season.
“Christian Mann dies in this movie,” Stagliano said. “He has a heart attack when the Virgin Mary smothers him with her big tits.”
Pictured: Stoya and Rocco Siffredi.
