Ever wonder what a Papa Roach cover of “Under the Sea” might sound like?  You may still find out, now that Sony is moving forward with a reimagining of The Little Mermaid.  If you guessed that this reimagining involves making the source dark™er and more gritty^®, congratulations, you’ve read a Hollywood trade before.  It’s funny, it doesn’t seem like making something dark and gritty would take much imagining at all, let alone RE-imagining.

Incidentally, Firefox spellcheck still doesn’t recognize the word “reimagining.”  I envy you, Firefox, I really do.

Hans Christian Andersens’ The Little Mermaid is the latest fairy tale to follow into the studios thirst for reimaginings*. [How do you "follow into" a "thirst"?  Oh nevermind. -Ed]
Sony has picked up Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale, a book by Carolyn Turgeon, for Country Strong filmmaker Shana Feste to write and direct [yes, the woman who tried to make Gwyneth Paltrow a country singer. -Ed]. Tobey Maguire and Jenno Topping, who worked with Feste on Country Strong, are producing.
The story gets its point of view shifted and the tone is definitely not Disney. It centers on a princess who, in order to save her ravaged kingdom, sets out on a dangerous journey to marry the prince of her rival kingdom, not knowing that a beautiful mermaid has fallen for the same man and has sacrificed everything to be with him. [HollywoodReporter]

At least it’s based on a book.  Usually producers of dark reimaginings of fairy tales aren’t into books, because the covers clash with their graphic t-shirts of energy drinks.  Wait, did you say one of the producers was Tobey Maguire?  Why, this doesn’t sound like a Tobey Maguire project at all.  He’s such a nice boy.  In fact, I suspect this might be the work of… EMO TOBEY MAGUIRE!

Read the rest of this entry »

(Sam Raimi hates having to raise his hand in order to speak at board meetings.)

A while back, IESB reported that Spider-Man 4 was being put on hold indefinitely because Sony and Sam Raimi couldn’t agree on a story.  Sony denied it, but long story short, it’s true.  Sam Raimi wants to use Vulture as the bad guy like he originally wanted in Spider-Man 3. Sony wants to f it up like they did Spider-Man 3.

Raimi wants to have a criminal known as the Vulture act as the primary antagonist in the film while the studio is pushing for a romantic sub-plot involving a burglar named the Black Cat in addition to another villain.

A succession of writers has tried to marry the two parties’ differing visions to no effect. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) was hired in October 2008 to pen a key version of the screenplay, on top of the earlier version penned by James Vanderbilt (“Zodiac”). Last year, Sony brought in Gary Ross — Oscar-nominated for his adapted script on 2003’s “Seabiscuit” — which he also helmed.  Alvin Sargent is penning the latest iteration.

[For Spider-man 3] Raimi wanted to use classic villain Vulture in addition to Sandman, another classic creation. The studio pushed him to use Venom, a character that was introduced in the late 1980s, because it thought that character, with its slick alien-symbiote origin, would lend itself to more effective marketing material and a way to attract “the kids.” [THR]

If you hire someone to do a job, let him do the damn job.  You don’t see me telling the hookers how to poop on my glass coffee table do you?  …Okay, bad example.  What do you think, Emo Spider-Man?

Read the rest of this entry »

The word around the campfire today is that Sony is developing a Venom movie as a Spider-Man 3 spinoff.  Venom, who was played by Topher Grace and was such an interesting part of Spider-Man 3 that I didn’t even remember it, actually died in the movie.  But that hardly matters.  As Rob Lowe’s character says in Thank You for Smoking, “So what?  That’s one line of dialog.  ‘Thank god we invented the… you know, whatever device.’”

Gary Ross [Pleasantville, Seabiscuit] is writing “Venom” as a potential directing vehicle. Ross is already writing “Spider-Man 4” for the studio.  In the comics, Venom is a gooey alien parasite that bonds with Peter Parker and later his newsroom rival, among other people, becoming one of more popular villains in “Spider-Man’s” rogue gallery.  Topher Grace portrayed the character in the 2007 movie, which ended with both the human and the alien symbiote apparently destroyed in an explosion. [Variety]

So… am I supposed to be more or less excited about this than about Spider-Man 4?  Because I gotta tell you, I’m feelin pretty shrugswardly about both of them.  And I should be the target audience.  I’m not even the kind of guy who (*air quotes*) had sex with (*air quotes*) girls in (*air quotes*) high school.

Read the rest of this entry »