Only we -are- getting a new Indiana Jones here one of these days hopefully before Ford dies for real.
That is the problem, though. Everyone’s obsessed with reboots, refurbs, and rehashes of old movies and old franchises. With movies costing the average GNP of small countries, none of the studios has the chutzpah to get out there and do anything interesting because it might flop. (Well, except Pixar, I guess. Zootopia looks like it won the lotto.) I remember when movies like Ghostbusters were the mainstay, not the exception. It also makes me happy for people like Guillermo del Toro, who has enough clout to MAKE the studios pony up for original content (Devil’s Backbone, Crimson Peak, Pan’s Labyrinth)… but again, that’s the exception, far from the rule.
When you see “Competing projects”, it’s usually over a source material that the more high-profile owners CAN’T sue over, like two Hercules movies, or two Jungle Book movies, or two Snow White movies in as many months. Just look at The Asylum pump out their own Sleeping Beauty cheapo the minute Maleficent hits theaters.
In “Mirror, Mirror”‘s case, we got a competing Snow White movie because Tarsem Singh thought he was going to do Snow White & the Huntsman, didn’t get to, and went out to make his own since there was no law against it.
Which sort of conjures up WHY Andy Serkis–who Really Wanted to Direct–went out to do his own actors-morphed-into-animals movie when he didn’t get to be in Jon Favreau’s.
(And as for “Why doesn’t Warner just give up already?”, A) it’s too expensive to give investors back their money once they’ve already started spending it to shoot, and B) they’re Warner. So, they’ll dump it in theaters during an invisible “cannon-fodder” weekend when no other hits are playing for two weeks, and hope it leaves early.)
The other issue worth noting is this: Serkis’s movie is supposedly going to fairly true to the original Kipling stories. Favreau’s version appears to reincorporate some stuff from Kipling, but it’s effectively a live-action remake of the 1967 Disney cartoon which, though it has a few plot points and characters in common with its nominal source material, really bears only a passing resemblance to the book. I get the impression that Favreau’s film is supposed to be a movie for Disney fans, while Serkis’s is geared toward Kipling fans. As I consider myself more of a Kipling fan (though I do enjoy the Disney version), I’m hoping Serkis will indeed deliver an adaptation that’s fairly true to the book. Do you think many other audience members will care about this distinction, though? I get the impression that Adam McCabe really doesn’t, and I can kind of understand why: twoJungle Books may just bee too many, regardless of their wildly differing plots. Also, I want to say that a few years ago, Serkis announced his version a good while before Disney announced theirs. Does anybody else remember if this is accurate?
Comments for Warner Bros. is STILL pushing forward their version of the “Jungle Book”…why?
Garaan
Only we -are- getting a new Indiana Jones here one of these days hopefully before Ford dies for real.
That is the problem, though. Everyone’s obsessed with reboots, refurbs, and rehashes of old movies and old franchises. With movies costing the average GNP of small countries, none of the studios has the chutzpah to get out there and do anything interesting because it might flop. (Well, except Pixar, I guess. Zootopia looks like it won the lotto.) I remember when movies like Ghostbusters were the mainstay, not the exception. It also makes me happy for people like Guillermo del Toro, who has enough clout to MAKE the studios pony up for original content (Devil’s Backbone, Crimson Peak, Pan’s Labyrinth)… but again, that’s the exception, far from the rule.
Jeffrey
Pixar didn’t make Zootopia. That was Walt Disney Animation Studios. The only link is John Lasseter and technology…
EricJ
When you see “Competing projects”, it’s usually over a source material that the more high-profile owners CAN’T sue over, like two Hercules movies, or two Jungle Book movies, or two Snow White movies in as many months. Just look at The Asylum pump out their own Sleeping Beauty cheapo the minute Maleficent hits theaters.
In “Mirror, Mirror”‘s case, we got a competing Snow White movie because Tarsem Singh thought he was going to do Snow White & the Huntsman, didn’t get to, and went out to make his own since there was no law against it.
Which sort of conjures up WHY Andy Serkis–who Really Wanted to Direct–went out to do his own actors-morphed-into-animals movie when he didn’t get to be in Jon Favreau’s.
(And as for “Why doesn’t Warner just give up already?”, A) it’s too expensive to give investors back their money once they’ve already started spending it to shoot, and B) they’re Warner. So, they’ll dump it in theaters during an invisible “cannon-fodder” weekend when no other hits are playing for two weeks, and hope it leaves early.)
David
The other issue worth noting is this: Serkis’s movie is supposedly going to fairly true to the original Kipling stories. Favreau’s version appears to reincorporate some stuff from Kipling, but it’s effectively a live-action remake of the 1967 Disney cartoon which, though it has a few plot points and characters in common with its nominal source material, really bears only a passing resemblance to the book. I get the impression that Favreau’s film is supposed to be a movie for Disney fans, while Serkis’s is geared toward Kipling fans. As I consider myself more of a Kipling fan (though I do enjoy the Disney version), I’m hoping Serkis will indeed deliver an adaptation that’s fairly true to the book. Do you think many other audience members will care about this distinction, though? I get the impression that Adam McCabe really doesn’t, and I can kind of understand why: twoJungle Books may just bee too many, regardless of their wildly differing plots. Also, I want to say that a few years ago, Serkis announced his version a good while before Disney announced theirs. Does anybody else remember if this is accurate?
Andrew M Craft
Well it would be nice to actually have a more faithful adaptation, meaning not a disney film.
Comments are closed.