Posts Tagged ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’

Bond vs. Titanic

Saturday, December 13th, 1997

As Tomorrow Never Dies approaches (12/17), the battle for Bond heats up. Variety’s Michael Fleming is reporting buzz that Sony (the new franchisee) is looking to bring Sean Connery back to Bond again under the ID4/Godzilla team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. This isn’t just a slap for MGM/UA (the long term franchise holder), but for Fox, which is anxious to get the directing/producing duo back in the fold for the Independence Day sequel A.S.A.P., preferably in time for the summer of 2000 between Star Wars pictures. Meanwhile, someone overheard Pierce Brosnan asking Martin Scorsese to take the helm for a Bond. Bond goes to Brooklyn? Bond would never survive Joe Pesci as “Boombach. Vinny Boombach.” Pesci would never leave Bond to a tank full of sharks when he could just beat him to death with a baseball bat and take the Bond girl.
Mousehunt and Mr. Magoo must be tracking like two dead dogs. Disney reports that exhibitors are requesting a re-re-release of The Little Mermaid for mid-December. Just what America needs in a grotesquely overcrowded December marketplace. Ironically enough, December is actually worse than the summer rush, when studios will actually move of a competitive date. This week there are four major releases. Next week it’s Bond and Titanic. On Christmas Day there are five major releases. Can you say “massacre?”
Role-ing, Role-ing, Role-ing: People’s The Sexiest Man Alive for 1997 (George Clooney) drops the Wild Wild West and who do they go to? This year’s favorite closet-buster, Kevin Kline. And they couldn’t have made a better choice. Artemus Gordon was known for being clever, not pretty. And Kline is a world class actor capable of almost anything. Meanwhile, Bette Midler has dropped out of the Lisa Douglas role in the upcoming Green Acres just as Ben Stiller has come on board. The two moves may or may not be related. So, when this movie stiffs, will Stiller complain (as he did with The Cable Guy) that the media just doesn’t appreciate his dark vision of “Green Acres?” Here’s a hint, Ben. If Arnold dates a pig, people will like it. If Arnold dates a human, they won’t.
Lots of room for opinions with this week’s openings (read: David could really be wrong!) Join the growing crowd of box office guessers by e-mail.

Secret Agent Wednesday

Wednesday, October 15th, 1997

The stories that Sony was in pursuit of the Bond franchise started last February. After a week or two of evasion, newly seated Sony Chief John Calley finally spoke to me about the situation and categorically denied that Sony was pursuing the Bond franchise. From all the tap dancing, it seemed that Calley had indeed been trying to leverage his relationship with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli (daughter of Cubby), with whom he had restarted the Bond engine at MGM/UA, the company he exited that is the long standing Bond rights holder. But the connection between Bond and UA was apparently too strong, legally or otherwise, to break. Story over.
But Calley was as smooth as Bond, stirred but not shaken, pursuing the back door entrance into Bondland, with producer Kevin McClory as the source of rights. McClory claims rights to the character based on his involvement in 1965’s Thunderball, which he produced and co-storied. In 1983, he delivered Bond to Warner Bros. with Never Say Never Again, which remade the Thunderball story and was the start (along with Time Bandits) of Sean Connery‘s career resurrection. Guess who was head of production at WB when that happened. Calley!
The brewing legal bloodbath, centered around McClory’s rights claim to the James Bond character, as opposed to his previous remaking of the one Bond property he had a hand in, should make December’s Bond release, Tomorrow Never Dies, look G-rated in comparison. MGM/UA is, as it has been for years, in serious financial straits and Bond is the one plum in their pudding. In the meantime, call Calley Little Jack Horner, sitting in his corner with Men In Black winning last summer’s box office race, Godzilla likely to win the summer of 1998 and an Astin Martin warming up in the garage.
And in the category of “more evasive, less important,” Disney-based Interscope Communications will bankroll twin brothers Josh and Jonas Pate’s third film, Earl Watt, to the tune of $50 million-plus. What’s it about? The secret agent brothers won’t say. Coyness from the twins whose first film was the direct-to-cable The Grave, described by TNT’s very own Joe Bob Briggs as “Eleven dead bodies. No breasts. Bloody rabbit’s foot. Pill poppin’. Embalming-table surgery. Aardvarking. Up-chucking. Baseball bat to the head. The old chained-to-the-floor-of-the-swamp-at-low-tide torture. Massive marijuana use. Multiple gravedigging. One brawl, with pitchfork. Finger rolls. Gratuitous Eric Roberts. Electric-chair fu.” I’ll tell you what, guys. Match the Coen brothers’ first film (Blood Simple) or The Wachowski brothers’ cherry-breaking Bound and you can be as mysterious as you want. In the meantime, you’re just pissing me off.
If I have the same effect on you, email me. And you were all right. I am 67 percent possessed.