One of a few films Disney is making as big-screen exploitations of existing theme parks is a film based on the Matterhorn ride.
The film, originally referred to as The Hill, was announced last year, and is currently being referred to as Untitled Explorers Project. Now the movie has a director: commercial helmer Brian Beletic, who has made spots for Converse, Nike, and Ikea, as well as many music videos for the Black Eyed Peas (‘Karma,’ ‘Weekends,’ ‘B.E.P. Empire,’ more) and videos for Fatboy Slim (‘Don’t Let the Man Get You Down’) Cee-Lo (‘Closet Freak,’ ‘Gettin’ Grown’) and El-P (‘Deep Space 9mm’). Read More »
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Briefly: One of the bigger laughs we had last year came via the announcement that the Wachowskis were attached to write and direct Hood, an urban retelling of the Robin Hood story. (With Will Smith attached to star.) The project didn’t exactly make waves, and rather fell off the radar as the Wachowskis moved into developing Cloud Atlas with Tom Tykwer; they’ll shoot that film later this year. Hood became something like a 2010 footnote: “remember this awful-sounding thing they flirted with before taking home the arty prom queen?”
On a parallel track, Warner Bros. has been slowly developing another Robin Hood film, this one a futuristic take set in “a dystopian London and center on a band of thieves whose activities restore hope to the city’s embattled population.” Jason Dean Hall was hired to write in 2009, and commercial director Nicolai Fuglsig attached to direct.
Now Deadline says that Michael Ross is rewriting the film. So WB is moving forward with this one, quite possibly because the Wachowskis are busy with Cloud Atlas. The question then becomes: is Hood effectively buried with this film taking priority at the studio?
With the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film having earned just shy of a billion dollars worldwide (a number that is vaguely horrifying, given the quality of the film) Disney understands the power of a succesful brand. So the company isn’t just developing a new Haunted Mansion movie with Guillermo del Toro and a Magic Kingdom film with Michael Chabon and Jon Favreau. It is also starting to pull together an adventure film inspired in the Matterhorn ride. Read More »
Ridley Scott isn’t the only man in Hollywood making a Robin Hood movie. Warner Bros is also developing a film based on the classic tale, but with a sci-fi twist. Danish commercial director Nicolai Fuglsig pitched the project, and has signed on to direct. Newcomer Jason Dean Hall, who wrote the Ashton Kutcher Sundance comedy Spread and is working on a big screen adaptation of the video game Blacklight for Fox, has been hired to write the screenplay. Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) and Gianni Nunnari (300, The Departed) are producing the adaptation.
According to RiskyBiz, the story will “be set in a dystopian London and center on a band of thieves whose activities restore hope to the city’s embattled population.” The producers describe it as “a futuristic action adventure” that will be “both inspired by and pay homage to the legend of Robin Hood.” The concept sounds like it has a lot of potential (but then again, they really didn’t tell us a heck of a lot). Fuglsig has directed a couple of commercials I’ve admired over the past few years, including one of my favorite commercials of all time. Check out some of his selected work in our commercial director spotlight.
Fox Atomic has acquired the rights to turn indie developer Zombie Studio’s original action property Blacklight into a feature film, comic book series and video game. The multi-pplatform project is described as “a covert military action epic set twenty-five years in the future.” Both the game and movie will be written by Jason Dean Hall, whose film Spread (Ashton Kutcher/Anne Heche) sold at Sundance to Summit Entertainment.
And according to the official press release, everything will be intertwined. The movie, , video game, and comics will feature “the same characters and high caliber military action, but with unique, intersecting storylines that complement each other.” The images in this post is actual concept art from the projects. More photos after the jump.
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