Posts Tagged ‘The Bang Bang Club’

Critics Roundup — April 22

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Water for Elephants|Red||Yellow||
Incendies (NY, LA) |Green|Yellow|Green|Green|
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (limited)|Yellow|Green||Green|
POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (limited)||Green|Green|Green|
The Bang Bang Club (NY, LA)|||Yellow||
Stake Land||Green|Green|Green|

When Are Rights Wrong?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 1997

Well, that’s going to be up to a judge. The fight is over two competing movie versions of The Bang Bang Club, a real life group of four photographers known for their death-defying war photos. Movie rights are breaking up that old gang of theirs. Emilio Estevez is prepping his version, acquiring rights from the survivors of the two dead members of the club (one died in action, the other committed suicide). Meanwhile, the other two members, still quite alive, sold their rights to a South African filmmaker. Geez. When I saw The Bang Bang Club on the production charts, I assumed it was the story of Emilio’s brother, Charlie Sheen.
After switching locations from Israel to Morocco for security reasons (go the distance), Phil Alden Robinson’s Age of Aquarius is being held up for a more traditional reason. Money! Universal’s Harrison Ford drama is suffering the same problem as their John Travolta starrer, Primary Colors. Universal (and pretty much every other studio in town) won’t spend anything over $50 million on anything other than action (if you build it, they will come). Travolta and director Mike Nichols deferred most of their salaries to bring their $70 million budget down to a more reasonable $50 million. At $80 million, Age of Aquarius will demand a lot of concessions from $20 million-plus man Ford if the love story set in Sarajevo is ever to make it on screen. The buzz is that Ford’s interest is already waning (feel his pain). Did I mention that Robinson made Field of Dreams?
For those of you who want to know how the business really works, check out the upcoming One Track Mind. A recently sold spec script by Ben Queen, the script tells the story of one script tracker, a studio assistant who finds the perfect script and is ready to claim it for his own after the writer mysteriously dies in a Universal Studios tour tram accident. That is, until other trackers who’ve read the script turn up. Then he has to kill them too. If you think that’s far fetched, how do you think I get my Hot Button copy every day?

Last Tango In Paris
was recently sent to the ratings board again and unlike Midnight Cowboy, it’s still NC-17. The Hot Button should be so lucky. E-mail me your NC-17 buttons today!
And don’t forget The Whole Picture.