‘Ronin’ Scribe To Rewrite Doug Liman’s ‘All You Need Is Kill’
Relativity’ Media‘s adaptation of “The Crow” appears to be moving forward rather smoothly. With Bradley Cooper attached to star (doesn’t that still feel weird?) and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“28 Weeks Later“) in the director’s chair, the company hit a snag when they became embroiled in a legal battle with the Weinstein Company who, in April, claimed that they possessed “a written contract signed by everybody” which gives the brothers the worldwide rights to the film (they distributed the 1994 film via their Miramax shingle).
However, with the courts apparently siding with Relativity last week — evidently there’s still an arbitration proceeding wherein Relativity seeks rescission of the parties’ agreement in regards to “The Crow” (not to mention seeking $20 million in damages for TWC’s mishandling of Relativity’s 2009 film, “Nine“).
With their end of the lawsuit behind them, Relativity has now announced that it has hired “Watchmen” scribe Alex Tse to pen what they are calling a “reinvention.” Like all reboots, this one is expected to be grittier, darker, goth-ier, etc.
Though Tse only has two produced credits to his name, “Watchmen” and Spike Lee‘s 2004 television movie “Sucker Free City,” he also penned a remake of the blaxpolitation film “Superfly” (1972) for Warner Bros. and Joel Silver around the same time, but it never got off the ground. Lee and Tse were also supposed to reteam on the writer’s first feature screenplay, “87 Fleer,” but that also came to pass. Welcome to Hollywood. He’s also worked on Paramount’s “Battling Boy” for Paramount, Warner Bros‘ “Ninja Scroll” remake and “Gangland” for Joel Silver‘s Dark Castle. We suppose all this gives Tse a pass on the torpid “Watchmen” which we will now proceed to blame on Zack Snyder since co-writer David Hayter has some good credits too.
Do we need a ‘Crow’ reboot? No, but that’s not the question in Hollywood these days. It’s more: why shouldn’t we remake this?
Meanwhile, in other screenwriting news Joby Harold (The unproduced Frank Miller adaptation of “Ronin,” “Army of the Dead“) has been tapped to re-write director Doug Liman‘s time-travel actioner “All You Need Is Kill.” At one point the project looked like it would be the “The Bourne Identity” filmmaker’s next project, but the “Luna” project has a green light, has moved to the front of the queue and re-writes only mean further delays. Frankly, having already tackled a teleportation sci-fi film in “Jumper” (easily Liman’s least interesting film), we’d be surprised if he did eventually make this picture, but stranger things have been known to happen in Hollywood. [Variety/Variety]
jj i thought the same of the gangfight scene when i was in the cinema, but when i went home there it was in the comic…also mixed bag for music implementation imo
@gatsby
I\’m talking about the use of violence by the characters in the gangfight. for god\’s sake laurie is stabbing someone to death along the way (the direction of the fight is btw. laughable, how in the hell is laurie kicking guys like puppets). this is seriously changing the characters and shows that snyder also doesn\’t understand key motivations of characters and their reasons for becoming vigilantes (don\’t get me started on the psychosexual aspects).
\”We suppose all this gives Tse a pass on the torpid “Watchmen” which we will now proceed to blame on Zack Snyder since co-writer David Hayter has some good credits too.\”
actually the blamegame in the case of watchmen surely doesn\’t land only on snyder. sam harris first script was laughable. hayters script shows taht he simply didn\’t get basic themes of watchmen (the bad \”v for vendetta\” update of setting and timelines, veidt dies etc.), which he even admitted in interviews. tse was basically a hired gun for snyder to bring hayters script back to the 80ies setting (though there are versions with the old setting from tse), reconstruct timelines and implement left out scenes from the gn. that script was \”polished\” by snyder and at the end even orci & kurtzman uncredited \”polished\” it. so the script issues really can\’t be blamed on snyder. what he CAN be blamed is the lousy implementation of music, character-destroying use of over the top violence (see gangfight) etc.