Ever wonder why “Edge Of Darkness” went from being the much-anticipated Martin Campbell follow-up to the excellent Bond film, “Casino Royale,” to being a generic-looking thriller now bound for January 2010 dumping-ground season?
Sounds like composer John Corigliano has inadvertently given us the answer and it sounds like classic indecision, the hedging of bets and creativity by committee that ruined the original idea.
Originally, Campbell hired Corigliano to score the revenge picture because he wanted Gibson seen in a “more introspective and intimate way than he is usually portrayed.” Sounds great, anything that isn’t conventional is always needed in a revenge film.
Cut to months later, his score is rejected and then replaced with one by Howard Shore (the “Lord Of The Rings,” many David Cronenberg films), because the studio (or producers) changed their minds on the picture’s tone.
“They wanted it to be more of an action film,” Corigliano told MovieScoreMag. “So they filmed more violent scenes, and wanted a score to match the macho image they wanted to create for their star. If I had been asked to score a Mel Gibson action film, I would have refused it – not because it isn’t a perfectly valid idea, but because it is wrong for me. On the other hand, this happens all the time. Howard Shore – whose music replaced mine -had exactly the same thing happen to his score for King Kong, which he’d composed, recorded, and had replaced by James Newton Howard’s music. It just hadn’t happened to me before.”
Pretty telling. Bit of a shame too because “Casino Royale” even impressed the shit out of skeptics like us, but ‘Darkness’ looks like it’s headed for the bottom of the delete pile.
it's due to the success of Taken. They did reshoots so they can try to market it in that way. They even lined up a similar release date.
Although it makes no sense why Deniro dropped this still looks 100 times better than anything he's done lately.
As a major Martin Campbell fan, this is very disappointing news. Couple this with Danny Elfman's old-school horror score being replaced on The Wolfman, and it looks like my new most anticipated 2010 films may be victims of death by studio tinkering. Considering Campbell revived Zorro and Bond twice, you'd think he'd get some leeway provided he kept the budget in line. Doubly odd since Warner Bros. usually lets auteurs have their way.
So let me get this straight–just because they switched the composers means the movie's gonna suck? I don't care what you have to say, 'Goldeneye' and 'Casino Royale' both totally rock, and if that's not enough for you-they got William freakin' Monaghan writing the scipt. Mr. Departed! Screw you guys-this is gonna be great.