What's Ahead: 2014 Director of the Year Axel Braun

This interview originally ran in the March 2014 issue of AVN magazine. To see the rest of the print coverage of the AVN Awards Show, click here. We’re only speculating here, but perhaps what lay behind Axel Braun’s utterly dumbfounded countenance as he stammered to express thanks during his incredible fourth trip in as many years to the AVN Awards podium to accept the trophy for Director of the Year was the thought: “How in the hell am I going to top THIS?!” Mind you, Axel Braun being Axel Braun, it goes without saying that he’ll do whatever he possibly can to try. “If somebody told you that I was going to rest on the laurels of my fourth consecutive Director of the Year award,” he trumpeted to us, “somebody lied.” Having wrapped his first title for the new Wicked Fairy Tales line he’s spearheaded under his recently-inked contract with Wicked Pictures—Snow White XXX: An Axel Braun Parody—as well as a parody of TV action drama 24, the helmsman extraordinaire reported that next up, “I’ll jump on the second project for Wicked Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty XXX, and right after [that] two big superhero movies and the second Riley Steele showcase project, Riley Goes to Hell.” (The first, which marked the commencement of Steele’s contract with Axel Braun Productions, having been the AVN Editor’s Choice-garnering Riley Goes Gonzo.) In addition, Braun revealed, he’s returning to his first true megaproduction, from all the way back in 2003: “I’m working on a director’s cut of my 35mm opus Compulsion.” And somewhere in between all that he’ll be setting aside a moment to receive yet another high accolade to add to his dossier: an induction into the esteemed XRCO Hall of Fame. Where does the Axel Braun gravy train stop? Not anywhere in immediate sight, that’s for sure.