Hollywood Death List, #2
It’s sequel week on the Hollywood Death List.
Gore Verbinski is listed in Good condition. The director of Pirates of the Caribbean can essentially write his own ticket after the monster that was Pirates (Current domestic gross: 302 million). He’s doing so with his next production “The Weather Man” which is rumoured to feature Nicholas Cage.
Incidentally, Verbinski was also responsible for the American remake of The Ring ($129M), he’s apparently decided to bail on Ring 2. This would normally strike me as a bad move, but all eyes are on Verbinski to ht it out of the park with the planned Pirates sequel in 2005.
Gore Vebinski| Good Condition | Trade Value: $126.70
Vin Diesel continues his pattern of bailing on potentially lucrative sequels with news that he’s out of xXx 2. The first movie grossed an impressive $142 million, so why is Diesel bailing on a franchise in the making? The head scratcher here is that Diesel apparently ditched xXx2 for a sequel to Pitch Black which grossed a forgettable $39 million. Must be quite a script.
Diesel also vacated his spot for the second The Fast and the Furious movie ($144M). 2 Fast 2 Furious didn’t appear to suffer from Diesel’s departure grossing $127 million domestically.
Vin Diesel | Fair Condition | Trade Value: $55.34
A name I’m sure you haven’t heard is our last patient this week. Doug Liman’s condition is listed as Undetermined. Liman has been hot and cold directing such hit-it-out-the-park flicks such as a Swingers ($4.5M) and The Bourne Identity ($121M), but he’s also had a dud in the form of Go ($16.9M) — every heard of it? Didn’t think so.
Liman is Undetermined because he’s apparently opped out of the sequel to Bourne, the Bourne Supremacy, and the buzz on his current directorial effort, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, is that he can’t appear to pull together a cast.
You can’t say much to malign a guy who did Swingers (Did it really gross only $4.5 million?), but his hot and cold directorial record remains a concern.
Doug Liman | Undetermined Condition | Trade Value: Not traded on HSX.com
From the WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING file: Richard Donner is actually excited about a sequel to The Goonies which this article calls “a classic”.
Trailer of the week honors are split between the new cineamatoghical musings of director Alfonso Cuaron’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express. Take a long moment to watch The Polar Express — it represents the best rendering of human beings that I’ve ever seen. Don’t get too excited, it’s not out until Xmas 2004.
Vin Diesel is a D&D nerd, so of course he's going to spring for the cool sci-fi flick instead of the dorky car movie. I -heart- Vin. Pitch Black was awesome. It just fell on a deaf audience. The majority of moviegoers don't give a rat's ass about hardcore science fiction, preferring the fluffy stuff like Star Trek/Wars and the Matrix.
Blade Runner is more cyberpunk noir. Pitch Black has space ships, aliens, foreign planets, logistical problems, adventuring parties. It's pretty classic. Something Niven would write.
There haven't been many serious scifi movies because most scifi authors can't characterize for shit. They have good ideas, but dialogue is stilted, etc.
I'd like to see a movie of Niven's Known Space, though. Kzin and Belters and blah blah.
Pitch Black was science fiction noir. A sleeper hit, it was übercreepy but had enough action to please the average action-fan-person. Let's not forget the production work earned it a THX certification.
I've heard the 'sequel' is actually going to be a prequel, called "Riddick"
Yeah, I've heard of "Go". Liked it actually. Of course "Swingers" was great, and I am likewise surprised at its paltry take.
"The Goonies" is definitely a classic, although a sequel?? hmmmm
And "The Polar Express"...yet another of my daughter's books soon to be on screen. Good thing I've got a kid or I wouldn't have ever heard of it. What's next..."Goodnight Moon" or "The Runaway Bunny"?
GOODNIGHT BRUSH
GOODNIGHT MUSH
GOODNIGHT NUTSAHLGUAHLTHGHLAHGUHALHOMPHHOMPH
>Blade Runner is more cyberpunk noir. Pitch Black has space ships, aliens, foreign planets, logistical problems, adventuring parties. It's pretty classic. Something Niven would write.
Blade Runner may have been CP noir, but that doesn't also disqualify it from being hard SF. It didn't have any technology that is known to be impossable (except implyed FTL travel, which is generally expempted from the "can't be impossiable according to known physics"...most of Niven's Known Space would fail without that expemption).
As for pitch black, since you say it is nivensque, well, I'll have to put it on the "to rent" pile.
Dear Rands;
I went to see a childhood favorite of mine, The Cat in the Hat. It did not match my expectations. These reviews from the Limey site Guardian Unlimited put it succinctly:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1094482,00.html?82%3A+Film+news
