Ron Perlman is setting up the Hemingway film slot, updates on the "Sons of Anarchy" spin-off "Legends," a third "Hellboy" film, and next steps for his refuge studio.

Exclusive: Ron Perlman is still a man of action. The tireless star of Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy, now 76, has half a dozen films in production and plans to play Hemingway in a new biopic in Cuba next year, and will join the highly anticipated Sons of Anarchy Legends spin-off. One year after […]

Exclusive: Ron Perlman is still a man of action. The indefatigable star of Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy, now 76, has a half-dozen films in production and is set to play Hemingway in a new biopic set in Cuba next year, and will co-star in the highly-anticipated spin-off Sons Of Anarchy Legends.

A year after Deadline announced Perlman's Asylum Studio banner, we spoke with the veteran actor (who made his big screen debut nearly 50 years ago) and company co-founder Willie Morris about Perlman's upcoming indie slate and studio projects.

DEADLINE: Ron, we almost met at the Venice Film Festival last month. I think you were at the festival with your new project called Sedona but it wasn't in the official lineup…

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Ron Perlman: Yes, that's right. Willie can touch on that project specifically…

Willie Morris: We just started working with Google and 100 Zeros [Google's JV with Range]. We recently launched a teaser for the Sedona on our new YouTube channel and used some of their technology to add depth to it so you can view it with VR or space glasses as an add-on feature if you'd like.

Perlman: I got to know Google VP Partnerships [VP Partnerships, former director of entertainment content] John Zepp last year after I did Doug Liman's Asteroid immersive movie. So he invited us to the festival, where they were working in the inclusive sector. For me, Venice symbolizes a connection that has been temporarily lost because it symbolizes the glitz and scope and luxury of the way we used to enjoy our cinema.

Deadline: Sure it's a great festival... so Google put money into Sedona?

MORRIS: Google put some money into our independent project, which is in the Post, and then in return, we used their technology to create spatial videos that appear in some of their launch campaigns with the glasses. So they wanted space content and arts support, and we needed some funding to help launch this little indie film.

Perlman: Sedona won't be ready for nearly a year. But Google has been helpful in launching our YouTube channel. I have been evolving due to the intersection of Tech Studios and Asylum. Technology is not something you can escape from, but something you can use as an enhancement to explore the human experience.

Deadline: A.I. It has been one of the hot topics recently. You recently starred in a short film called The Ride that used A.I. I assume you are not against working on projects that use A.I.?

Perlman: My barometer will always be artificial intelligence. It is the tail that wags the dog. If there is, I'm not interested. I am not interested in any technology that replaces the unique contribution of the human heart and soul, but I am fully prepared. I have a way to use these new technologies to my advantage. Asylum is a celebration of conventional filmmaking and the extension of the shoulders we stand on. But everything we did here at Asilo came out gradually. It was like a punch in the nose. It was the same with our first film, Kodak Super XX, and with Sedona, both of which are in post-production.

We wanted to create an environment where artists, especially filmmakers, could flourish and have a chance to spread their wings with highly original contributions to what has always been a risky, dangerous and original art form, which has lost its way as streaming has reduced the luxury and breadth of space that cinema once occupied. Ours is basically a mandate to step back and create an environment where it happens as the norm, not as an aberration. At Asylum, we will try to be very much a legacy studio where we not only produce, but also market and distribute our films. Theater is the engine that everything runs on and is an incredibly strong revenue stream.

We don't yet have the infrastructure or the war chest to do all the things I'm describing, but the dream is to become a powerful studio where we make the movie and put the movie out there and control every aspect of its life right up to its last stop, which happens to be home entertainment.

Deadline: Do you have sponsors or is the company self-funded?

Perlman: We're building a war chest, but no way to get there. It takes time. We have two films in post and two or three more in development, a TV series and a documentary.

Deadline: We previously covered Kodak SuperXX with David Dastmalchian and Kelly Marie Tran. Tell us about Sedona. Not much online about it. Lily Simmons stars, right?

Morris: Lily Simmons, Israel Broussard, Nicholas Cirillo of the Outer Banks and Toby Sandman of Running Point. I joke that White Lotus is on acid, but it's about an actress who meets a regular guy, convinces him to come to Sedona for the weekend, and then he and his friends gas him for most of the weekend. It's a bit of fever dream psychological horror, and it's a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Kodal Super XX – which will probably end up being called Super XX – is already being sent to festivals.

Deadline: What will be produced next?

Perlman: I was recently filming in Ireland on Amazon MGM and the Blumhouse-Atomic horror film Monster Seasons. But for Asylum, it's a walking race between the two projects we came to the party with. One is the Hemingway Project, which looks at Hemingway over the last few years and everything leading up to his suicide. This is when he starts to lose everything. This is a project that is very close to starting production. And then there's a comedy called The Helping Man, which is also a Tarantino-esque steak comedy, basically because it's a bunch of white men talking weird and thinking they're gangsters when they're nothing but losers and bodies are falling left and right, but you always know you're watching a comedy. It's a silly script and close to production.

Deadline: It's the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Sun Also Rises, so there have been various Hemingway events around the world. And I've covered other projects about Hemingway late in his life. Do you play Hemingway and what makes this one stand out?

Perelman: It will produce asylum. I'm playing Hemingway. I'm also co-directing the film with the Mexican master Gabriel Bristin, who brought me to Cuba in the first place, and that's where I became infected with this story and couldn't get it out of my head. After a decade, we will finally do it soon.

Deadline: I've always been a big fan of his work and, like many, I've been fascinated by his life. Even though he has become out of fashion in recent years due to some of his ways of living and thinking…

Perlman: I don't know a writer who doesn't reveal that. But we are inclined to all this. You see, he had a profound impact on the last century as an artist. And yet all this was overshadowed by the man, and how colorful and interesting he was. He started many arguments and debates and polarized. This is what fascinated me. that and the fact that in the last years of his life he was in the vortex of the fall of Batista, the rise of Castro and the anger of J. Edgar Hoover was there.

DEADLINE: And he used to write standing up on an easel, right?

Perelman: He did it because he had back problems...

Deadline: Is this an original screenplay or based on a book?

PERLMAN: It was a story told to me by the Cuban writer Enrique Ciroles, who died a decade ago. He was fascinated by Hemingway and was his main biographer in Cuba and had great access to parts of Hemingway's life and psyche. The film's logline is "Of all Hemingway's lovers, Cuba is the one who killed him." So when Enrique told me this story of Hemingway's Perfect Storm, and then all these political elements, all these psychological elements, all this paranoia that he thought J. He was being pursued by Edgar Hoover, he added, which everyone thought was crazy at the time, but turned out to be true. It was just a story I couldn't get out of my head.

Deadline: Is the Hemingway estate involved?

Perlman: The Hemingway estate is completely behind us. In fact, they offered us his former home, Finca Vigia, now a museum, to shoot at. We have full cooperation with many cultural actors in Cuba. We have access to the bar La Bodeguita del Medio where he was drinking mojitos. We have access to the El Floridita bar where he drank sweets. We have access to the Ambos Hotel. Mundos wrote where he was standing, and he had two other rooms in the hotel that he frequented. We have access to his famous boat Pilar. We have access to all of these.

Deadline: So what should happen in the continuation of the project?

Perlman: It's always been a dream to shoot it in Cuba. We are exploring whether this is possible. We have a backup plan to shoot in Spain if we need to, but we hope to use all of these great locations in Cuba.

DEADLINE: How does this fit into your schedule on Legends , the upcoming Sons of Anarchy spinoff?

Perlman: I'm trying to finish Hemingway before we start shooting Legends, which is supposed to be in March. I've always wanted to shoot Hemingway in January or February, because it's a little colder in Havana, and then it gets brutally hot and it's hard to wear the prosthetics, which I obviously will.

Deadline: How excited are you about Legends?

Perlman: I was amazed at what Charlie [Hunnam] was able to do there. I know how long he's been floating, and I know how hard it was to get this boulder up the mountain, and the fact that he succeeded, and then the reaction on the Internet was so unique. I don't recall seeing anything more enthusiastic in terms of how the world reacted to this news. We can't wait to get back to work with FX. John Landgraf, to me, was the greatest CEO I've ever worked for, because he has the genius of an executive, but the soul of an artist. The stories he's made happen on his network, I've never seen from an executive before.

DEADLINE: And you play your versions, right?

Perlman: Yes. Believe me, it was humbling to have to audition for that [laughs].

Deadline: Do you think Taylor Sheridan will return for it? Your characters clashed famously in the first two seasons…