Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: July 13, 2008

It’s almost time for The Dark Knight. We’ve almost made it. Not long now. However, in the meantime here’s a new Weekend Movie News Wrap Up to keep you preoccupied.

This week:

We try and figure out Where the Wild Things Are, David Duchovny blogs, Robert Downey Jr goes Holmes, John Cusack sues and Darren Aronofsky may be giving us some Prime Directives.

1. Warner Brothers’ Where the Wild Things Are isn’t out of the woods yet. The $80 million Spike Jones film has been pulled from the WB release schedule.  The film was originally supposed to open this October, but after a test screening went haywire (kids crying and terrified at children’s film is never  a good thing) the release was then shifted to October 2009, but now it’s appears to be going under some major retooling.

Warner Brothers Big Cheese Alan Horn (that is his official title) said this about the current state of the film:

“We’ve given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film. We’d like to find a common ground that represents Spike’s vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn’t call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we’re just trying to get it right. We try to take a few shots, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The jury is still out on this one. But we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we’ll have an artistically compelling movie.”

It’s good to see that the studio is still behind Jonze, but I just wonder how long that will last. This is starting to sound an awful lot like the troubles that The Exorcist: Dominion had a few years back.

At the very least – expect a few interesting versions of the DVD in 2020.

Source: LA Times

2.  David Duchovny has begun blogging about his X-Files: I Want To Believe experiences. The star will be answering fans questions and sharing stories about the franchise.

Come on – who wants to go online and read what some idiot has to say about movies? …. um I just realized – that’s what I do. Do’h!

Seriously though, it’s a fun blog  (fitting in nicely with Duchovny’s dry sense of humor) so I recommend that you check it out here.

Source: Chud and The Duchovny Files

3. Robert Downey Jr will star as Sherlock Holmes in the Guy Ritchie directed film about the legendary detective which is to be titled..err.. Sherlock Holmes.

The film is being pitched as a more action oriented version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic creation, but it will have to compete with the Judd Apatow produced comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell that also plans to put a modern spin on the literary character. Wait a minute – wasn’t that comedy version already made with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley as Without A Clue ?

Source: Variety

4. John Cusack seems like a pretty nice guy – but be warned  – make sure that you pay him!

Last year Cusack signed on to the Jan De Bont film Stopping Power, an action thriller with a supposed 51 minute car chase. However, the film was never made (the company didn’t have enough money) and now Cusack is suing to get his $4.5 million salary that was promised in his “pay or play” contract, and an extra $1.1 million for costs and other payments for relocating to Germany for the shoot.

If you don’t know “pay or play” is a contract that stipulates that you get paid whether or not the film is made – hence the reason Nicolas Cage was paid $17 million for not playing Superman!

Source: TMZ

5. We screamed and cried when we heard that MGM were planning a RoboCop remake, but it would seem that the film has taken a very interesting turn. Requiem For A Dream and The Fountain helmer Darren Aronofsky is now in discussions to direct the remake of the 1987 Paul Verhoven original.

Interesting, if there’s a director who won’t play safe it’s Aronofsky. He is after all the man who Warner’s originally brought in to reboot the Batman franchise, but when he delivered a script that was dark, serious and nothing like Batman, he left the project.

Side note – although I own Requiem For  A Dream on DVD I’ve never watched it because I haven’t got over the experience of seeing the film in the cinema. Never has a film left me so shell shocked.

Source: Chud

That’s it for another week.

See you at the movies!