‘Ronin’ Scribe To Rewrite Doug Liman’s ‘All You Need Is Kill’
Relativity’ Media‘s adaptation of “The Crow” appears to be moving forward rather smoothly. With Bradley Cooper attached to star (doesn’t that still feel weird?) and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (“28 Weeks Later“) in the director’s chair, the company hit a snag when they became embroiled in a legal battle with the Weinstein Company who, in April, claimed that they possessed “a written contract signed by everybody” which gives the brothers the worldwide rights to the film (they distributed the 1994 film via their Miramax shingle).
However, with the courts apparently siding with Relativity last week — evidently there’s still an arbitration proceeding wherein Relativity seeks rescission of the parties’ agreement in regards to “The Crow” (not to mention seeking $20 million in damages for TWC’s mishandling of Relativity’s 2009 film, “Nine“).
With their end of the lawsuit behind them, Relativity has now announced that it has hired “Watchmen” scribe Alex Tse to pen what they are calling a “reinvention.” Like all reboots, this one is expected to be grittier, darker, goth-ier, etc.
Though Tse only has two produced credits to his name, “Watchmen” and Spike Lee‘s 2004 television movie “Sucker Free City,” he also penned a remake of the blaxpolitation film “Superfly” (1972) for Warner Bros. and Joel Silver around the same time, but it never got off the ground. Lee and Tse were also supposed to reteam on the writer’s first feature screenplay, “87 Fleer,” but that also came to pass. Welcome to Hollywood. He’s also worked on Paramount’s “Battling Boy” for Paramount, Warner Bros‘ “Ninja Scroll” remake and “Gangland” for Joel Silver‘s Dark Castle. We suppose all this gives Tse a pass on the torpid “Watchmen” which we will now proceed to blame on Zack Snyder since co-writer David Hayter has some good credits too.
Do we need a ‘Crow’ reboot? No, but that’s not the question in Hollywood these days. It’s more: why shouldn’t we remake this?
Meanwhile, in other screenwriting news Joby Harold (The unproduced Frank Miller adaptation of “Ronin,” “Army of the Dead“) has been tapped to re-write director Doug Liman‘s time-travel actioner “All You Need Is Kill.” At one point the project looked like it would be the “The Bourne Identity” filmmaker’s next project, but the “Luna” project has a green light, has moved to the front of the queue and re-writes only mean further delays. Frankly, having already tackled a teleportation sci-fi film in “Jumper” (easily Liman’s least interesting film), we’d be surprised if he did eventually make this picture, but stranger things have been known to happen in Hollywood. [Variety/Variety]