Director Martin Campbell (The Mask Of Zorro) is returning to the Bond
franchise the helm the 21st instalment - a remake of Ian Fleming's original
007 novel Casino Royale.
Campbell previously directed Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan's debut movie in
1995, although Brosnan will not return for the new movie.
Campbell moved to England from New Zealand in 1966 and made his directorial
debut on the popular TV series The Professionals and Minder. He moved to
America in 1986 to direct Criminal Law and Defenceless, before entering
Hollywood with Goldeneye, The Mask Of Zorro, Vertical Limit and Beyond
Borders.
"The point of 'Ghost House' is that we want to bring new directors (like
Takashi Shimizu of The Grudge to Hollywood and give them a chance to make a
good horror film."
"I love the original Dawn Of The Dead, and I also really enjoyed the new
Dawn Of The Dead. I mean, they are both really great horror films. I want to
let somebody with a fresh vision bring The Evil Dead to a new generation and
a new audience with a different vision..."
Ted and Sam Raimi have begun writing Evil Dead 4, and will be developing it
for production later this year. Original cult star Bruce Campbell will
return as Ash...
The trade says Garland's screenplay will then be offered to studios as a
complete "turnkey" script and rights package.
The Halo franchise is one of the most popular in gaming history, having sold
over 12.8 million units and grossed approximately $600 million since its
2001 debut. Last year,
Halo 2
sold 6.4 million copies and was the second-bestselling game of the year.
The plot concerns a warrior soldier known only as "Master Chief" battling a
group of alien religious zealots who believe one of their most sacred
artefacts is located on Earth.
"It turns out, Captain Jack owes a blood debt to the legendary Davey Jones,
ruler of the ocean depths and captain of the ghostly Flying Dutchman. If
Jack can't figure a crafty way out of this one, he'll be cursed to an
afterlife of eternal servitude and damnation."
"And as if that weren't enough, Captain Jack's problems throw a huge wrench
into the wedding plans of the blissful Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, who
quickly find themselves thrust into Jack's misadventures."
The sequel traces the beginnings of the ancient feud between the two tribes
as Selene (Kate Beckinsale), the beautiful vampire heroine, and Michael
(Scott Speedman), the lycan hybrid, try to unlock the secrets of their
bloodlines.
The fast-paced, modern-day tale of deadly action, ruthless intrigue and
forbidden love takes them into the battle to end all wars as the immortals
must finally face their retribution.
Q: What do you think of the backlash against an Evi Dead remake?
Sam Raimi: "Well, I respect the fans and their wishes, and more than
anything, Rob and I want to please the fans of the films. But I've never
thought that making a film ever takes away from an existing film. No matter
what you do, they're just two separate realities."
"Evil Dead was made by Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell and myself, in 1979 we
were shooting it. It bridged over into 1980. It was a 16mm film and although
we think it was effective in a lot of ways, we actually think that it's not
like it couldn't be improved in so many ways, from characterizations -
there's like no real characterizations - the dialogue is not very good, the
photography is like I mentioned 16mm, we had a small lighting kit."
"I think Tom Sullivan did a great job with the makeup but if he was given a
little more time and a little better budget, I think he could have even gone
further. And I love Bruce Campbell, so I don't think you ever replace Bruce
but I just think there's a lot that a new director could bring to it that I
didn't."
"I'm kind of excited to see it be born again in a strange way. I think it
could be a lot of fun for the fans of the first one, and I think there are
so many people that have never seen the thing that it's exciting to realize
that gee, that horror story we told could be retold to a much larger
audience, and maybe if it was told in a finer quality, maybe they would like
it."
Q: Would it be grounds for a new trilogy?
Raimi: "I haven't thought that far ahead."
Q: Would it be PG-13 like the other 'Ghost House' movies?
Rob Tapert: "I think that would be a mistake."
Raimi: "No, I don't think so."
Q: Would remaking it seal the doors for a part four? Wouldn't Evil Dead IV
confuse people then?
Raimi: "Oh, I think the fans are really smart. I don't think they'd be
confused. I'd like to make a part four. There's this very small audience for
Evil Dead IV, and if we ever make a movie called Evil Dead IV, which I'd
like to make with Rob at some point and starring Bruce Campbell, I'm not
saying there's a million people, but there's 100,000 people that will know
exactly what it is and that's about as big as the crowd is, honestly. It's
not a giant crowd. They're a great crowd."
Tapert: "And you might have to call it Army of Darkness II oddly enough
because only the fans really knew that that was Evil Dead III. Even the
people at 'Universal Home Video' called us up one time and said, 'We want to
do a direct to video Army Of Darkness II because that's a really good
title.' We said, 'No, that's really Evil Dead III.' They said, 'Oh, well, we
don't care about that Evil Dead stuff but the Army Of Darkness was really
good.' They're totally confused."
Q: Will Bruce be involved?
Raimi: "Evil Dead IV would just be made with Bruce, but if we make a new
Evil Dead movie, which we're hoping to produce, Rob and I would try to get a
young director with brand new ideas with his own cast and his own take on
the thing."
Q: No Bruce cameo?
Raimi: "I don't know."
Tapert: "Bruce has said no. He said he'd rather wait and do something else
rather than strictly playing a cameo."
Q: What are his feelings on the remake talk?
Tapert: "The only thing that Bruce has asked is that nobody is called Ash.
He wants to sit on that name."
Q: How far out are you?
Raimi: "We're way out in development. We're waiting to find the right
director for the project, that thinks he can really bring something new to
it so that we can say to the fans, 'We really believe in this guy. He loves
the material. He's got a great new take on it. He's told us all these
different ways he can improve it. And therefore we can go ahead with a clean
conscience thinking it's going to be a really good project, something that
the fans would like.'
Q: Would it be a 'Ghost House' release?
Raimi: "Would it be, Rob?"
Tapert: "I don't know. Meaning, eventually it'll probably end up back in the
Ghost House library. We actually haven't even thought about it."
Raimi: "It's probably not, but we don't know."
Q: Did Bruce want to do Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash?
Raimi: "He might have been. I don't want to speak for Bruce. I don't really
know how he felt about it."
Q: What do you look for in a young director?
Raimi: "Somebody that can create really good characters, because I think
that would be a great way to improve Evil Dead. Somebody with a real desire
to terrify the audience, that has a morbid, sick fascination with punishing
them. Someone who is really a great visualist, good campfire storyteller."
Q: More scary than funny now?
Raimi: "Well, the Evil Dead movie was always intended to be the scariest
movie we could make with elements of black humour. Then Evil Dead II, we
tried to change the balance of that and mostly make a dark comedy that had
elements of a horror film. But to remake Evil Dead 1, that much I would like
to insist upon, our goal and the goal of this director should be to terrify
the audience in a very intense, and merciless way."
Tapert: "As Sam would say, to punish them."
Q: When do you start Grudge 2?
Tapert: "Grudge 2, we're working on the script right now. Shimizu San and
Taka were here for about two weeks, and sending treatments back and forth,
ideally off to script in the next month or so."
Q: Takashi Shimizu would direct again?
Tapert: "That's the intention. Based on him being here, there's a deal,
there's everything, he said he loves it, he wants to do it. If he came back
tomorrow and said no, he wasn't going to, he would legally be able to do
that but I think everybody's aboard. Certainly Taka's aboard and we
desperately think Shimizu san is fantastic."
Q: Will Sarah Michelle Gellar be Back?
Tapert: "We loved working with Sarah and right now our intention is to use
her character in the sequel. It's really her decision if she wants to come
back and do it, but we loved the experience and love working with her and
think she was not only an asset to bringing in an audience but to taking an
American cast and an all Japanese crew and working in a strange land, she
was the camp leader."
"She was the one who when the new people came over, she rallied, 'Hey, let's
go out to dinner, let's go to the fish market, let's do all those things.'
So she was really kind of the beacon for all the non Japanese speaking
people who came to Japan. So to work with somebody like that again would be
great."
Q: You've decided on the Spider-Man 3 villain. Has he been established in
your previous films or starting a new story?
Raimi: "Actually, I'm not at liberty to say because I think 'Sony
Corporation', they're very particular about the presentation of the
Spider-Man story aspects to the press."
"So it's really in their hands. When they decide they want to release the
villain, I think then they'll make some formal presentation. They'll
probably have a mock up of what he looks like and announce the actor that
they're going to cast. I think because they've done this in the past. I
haven't yet talked to them about it if that's how they want to put it
forward, so I don't think I'm at liberty to say?"
Q: What is the theme?
Raimi: "I can't say yet. I'm sorry."
Q: You don't know?
Raimi: "No, I know. But I want to allow 'Sony' really to say when they want
to say what aspects of the film they want to put out to the public. I think
they're just thinking it's way too early and people have just had enough of
Spider-Man for the time being."
"They want to give him a rest. And when it comes time in a year or year and
a half to start talking about that movie, to start getting the audience
interested, I think then they want to probably make their presentation
around then."
Tapert: "Bruce, I think he's more in touch with the fans all the time over
Evil Dead, he was the one who came back and said, 'Oh, there's this huge
backlash. People don't want to do it.' And of all the crazy people, our
original investors who would profit from it said, 'Geez, we don't know why
you'd even do it. We've done very well, but...'"
"But there is somebody out there who is going to be able to reinvent that
movie for a whole new group of people who are never going to experience it
in a theatrical event. And it really, even though it's great DVD, it's a
great theatrical experience."
"To bring that to a whole new generation and a whole new group of people
with somebody who wants to honour the first movie and take it to the next
level of entertainment, in building the better roller coaster so to speak,
we would be denying the people who originally like it and the people who
will never see it and experience it that opportunity if we don't at least
investigate to the best of our ability how can we go about that task."
Q: If you don't get a script or director, will you abandon it?
Raimi: "I would say we'd put it on hold. I don't think we'd abandon it, but
we won't make it unless we have a really good script and a really great
director, somebody we feel is just right for it."
Q: "Is there anything you can tell about Spider-Man 3?"
Raimi: "I'm really not at liberty to honestly. I can tell you I think what
you probably already know if you're interested and that is that Alvin
Sargent is hard at work on the screenplay now. My brother Ivan and I turned
in a few different drafts of stories and we finally decided on one direction
we wanted to go."
"I am starting to work with my storyboard artist now. A lot of the guys that
worked with me on the last two Spider-Man pictures, coming up with the
visuals, starting to design some of the action sequences. I'm having the
first discussions now with 'Sony Pictures Imageworks' on how to create some
of these different characters."
"What improvements, for instance, would we do to Spider-Man. They'll be
subtle and the audience probably won't even be aware of them but to that
character specifically, how will we improve his style of movement, his
density, the sense of weight? How can we take the next step? Where did we
fail and what should we do about it to bring it to the next level? I'm
really trying to shoot for a level of reality that we haven't yet achieved
yet with Spider-Man films."
Q: Will you make the release date?
Raimi: "I don't know. I don't know if I'll make it because there are so many
things that have to come together very, very quickly now and it's hard to be
able to say if they're all on course and a lot of them depend on the success
of others. So it's a guessing game. But the answer is actually I must be
ready, because Sony's demanding that release date. So I'm just going to say
yes, I'll be ready. 2007."
Q: And when will you start shooting?
Raimi: "Well, I'm actually going to start shooting tests next month. Tests,
experiments with costume and the characters, movement, new CG types of
technology that we're going to develop, combinations of existing
technologies that are put together in new ways to make it seem new but that
stuff already exists. Our stunt people are going to be working in a month
also, shooting tests, mechanical effects tests."
Q: You shot the Doc Ock hospital scene during tests?
Raimi: "Yes, we're going to do big scenes earlier and probably the first
thing to shoot really early might be plate photography and maybe as early as
September. Maybe a unit to shoot three days of plates, could be as early as
that."
Q: When will actors start filming?
Raimi: "I think in September, it will just be myself, the director of
photography, visual effects supervisor shooting environments. The actors
probably wouldn't start, I don't know, but I think at this point, maybe in
October? That's a guess."
Q: Will Bill Pope be back?
Raimi: "Yes, Bill Pope will be coming back as the director of photography."
** IN THE PIPELINE **