It must be a monster day, because following after the Giant Squid footage and the new Pacific Rim trailer we’re hearing updates about another monster movie: Godzilla. Legendary Pictures has hired Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Walking Dead) to do the “final rewrite” on the Godzilla script. This is the same script initially written by David Callaham (The Expendables), David Goyer (the Dark Knight trilogy), and Max Borenstein (The Seventh Son). That script was then handed over to Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) in order to “age up” the characters.
If all that scriptwriting shuffle wasn’t complicated enough, now two of the producers, Dan Lin and Roy Lee, are in a battle with the studio.
This one’s going to wind up in the courts, I’m told. My understanding is, Lin and Lee refused to reduce the fees they signed on for when the original deal was made. Legendary brass feel they have the latitude to get rid of them and is doing just that, exercising a pay-or-play clause and paying them upfront money to go away, with no back-end or credit on the film. The potential back-end on a global franchise is where the big bucks are. [Deadline]
Just to further complicate things, one of the Pacific Rim producers, Mary Parent, is working on a deal to also produce Godzilla. Gareth Edwards is still signed to direct with a release date planned for May 16, 2014.
They want to start filming in March, which means they’ll have to cast the lead actors soon. Bleeding Cool tipped us to some tweets from The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit and Variety’s Justin Kroll. Kit tweeted that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was offered a role but passed. Kroll tweeted that Henry Cavill, Scott McNairy, and Caleb Landry Jones were also being considered. He added that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Henry Cavill were the studio’s choices, while Scott McNairy and Caleb Landry Jones were “creative choices”.
This is absurd. None of these actors resemble Godzilla at all. GET IT TOGETHER, CASTING AGENTS.
[Banner picture via Reddit.]