The early trailers for Wanted present James McAvoy as a budding action hero under the guidance of Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman -- and although jumping through the air with guns blazing may look like John Woo-style action, McAvoy actually derived his inspirations elsewhere.

"To be honest with you, I watch action films if they've got sci-fi in them, or fantasy in them, or something like that," he said. "I don't really watch the John Woo-type film where it's just action. I like it when it's tinged with concept, or tinged with philosophy or something like that, which this film is. It's also tinged with a manic, mad, weird, brilliant, genius director called Timur Bekmambetov, who's a very strange guy."

Many eccentrics flourish in Hollywood, but Bekmambetov does not seem to be doing it intentionally. "When he makes an odd decision, he doesn't make it strategically. He doesn't go, 'I'm going to make a really cool, odd, left field, offbeat decision here and that's going to mark me out as an ingenious director.' He just makes decisions that happen to be really f*cking strange and people around him inform him that they're strange and he goes, 'Really? That's interesting,' and then carries on. It gives that style that he has a truth, I think, about something real."

While McAvoy is making sense of his director, he is also making sense of his new release date. With the film moved to June, it is now officially a summer movie. "Bloody hell, is that what that means? I don't know, really. I didn't know the significance of moving it. When people say,'We're going to June, we're really excited we're going June,' [I'm] like, 'Great, that's great for you,' and then people explain the significance of it. So...fantastic if they're confident in it. It's brilliant. I haven't seen the film yet, so I don't know."