DAN’S MOVIE DIGEST 109

WOLVERINE

Screenwriter David Benioff (Troy) has been asked to write Wolverine, aspin-off movie from the X-Men franchise that will hopefully star HughJackman (right).

HE-MAN

‘Variety’ reports that John Woo (Face/Off) is being lined up to direct alive-action version of He-Man. Of course, he’s also been linked to a newTeenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, so take this news with a large pinch ofsalt. Mind you, it is being reported by the Hollywood trades…

MEG

Jan De Bont (Speed) is set to direct the big screen adaptation of SteveAlten shark thriller MEG, about the prehistoric ancestor of the great whiteshark.

‘Variety’ says Hellboy collaborators Guillermo del Toro, Larry Gordon, andLloyd Levin, will produce along with ‘Chud.com’ creator Nick Nunziata andKen Atchity.

The movie concerns a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepestcanyon, where scientist Jonas Taylor finds himself face-to-face with thelargest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom.

The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he sawbut still can’t prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother ofthe great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tonsand could tear apart a T-Rex in seconds.

Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With aPh.D. in palaeontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing,lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at thedeepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him toreturn to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him backinto a high-tech miniature sub.

Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’snever imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until theend of time. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one isgoing to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.

JURASSIC PARK 4

Mark Norell, from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City,claims to have gotten a peek at Jurassic Park 4, and commented: “…thediscovery of feathered dinosaurs at Liaoning is trickling down into popularculture. The first Jurassic Park film featured mainly scaly reptiles, butfrom what I’ve seen of the first shots of Jurassic Park IV, all thedinosaurs now have feathers.”

SURVIVOR

Author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) is about to see another of his novelsadapted for the big screen.

Survivor concerns Tender Branson – last surviving member of the so-called”Creedish Death Cult” – who dictates his incredible life story into theflight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feetsomewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity andcrash into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold thetale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domesticservant to an ultra-buffed, steroid-and collagen-packed media messiah,author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the evenbetter selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer To Delay Orgasm, ThePrayer To Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer To Silence Car Alarms).

He’ll even share his insight that “the only difference between suicide andmartyrdom is press coverage,” and deny responsibility for the Tender BransonSensitive Materials Landfill – a 20,000-acre repository for the nation’soutdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.

In related news, ‘HBO’ is interested in making a mini-series out ofPalahniuk’s book Haunting – about a motley collection of desperate writerslooking to improve their craft by attending a three month workshop in thecountry, run by an old man named Mr. Whittier. But could their host haveulterior motives for bringing them there?

Like many people, I was saddened to hear of Christopher Reeve’s death whenI heard it on Monday morning. To most people he was the definitive Superman,despite the third movie being overly cheesy (ending up on TV a year afterbeing shown in the cinema, IIRC) and the fourth being just plain terrible. Ididn’t know many of his other films, either, but his life-plan was cut shortdramatically in 1995 after a horse-riding accident that left him paralysedfrom the neck down.

At first, he wished he was dead, then seeing his children made him want to livemore than ever. His courageous fight to want to go on, and eventually walk againwas never fully realised but his campaign to advance research in stem-celltechnology will have had an effect more than any other person to date. He evenbattled to get his name back above the title again, starring in a remake ofHitchcock’s Rear Window, with him in the lead role but in a wheelchair,and the scene where his character’s breathing tube came loose and he had tochatter his teeth to get the nurse’s attention really happened to the actorshortly after his accident.

Drawing on experience, he recently directed a TV movie, The Brooke EllisonStory with Lacey Chabert in the title role, about an 11-year-old girlparalysed from the waist down after being hit by a car.

Strangely, he also turned down a lot of high-profile parts, including lead rolesin The Running Man, Total Recall, Body Heat, Fletcher Christian in TheBounty (1984), and Mason Verger in Hannibal.

Sadly, his fight came to an end on Sunday from a heart attack, due to septacemia,brought on by an infected pressure sore. He leaves behind a wife, Dana, two sonsand a daughter, and will be very much missed as a person and a campaigner, and isfar more worthy of books of condolence than a man, paid a lot of money to work ina knowingly-dangerous place, of whom no-one had known his name a month ago.

All figures are weekend box-office gross.

All dates are U.K release dates, and are subject to change.