Spierigs out for WB’s ‘Blood’ – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety.
By and large I only pay movie gossip a passing glance. It hardly pays to take the stuff seriously because as soon as you read about it, it’s already changed. But this article in Variety seems novel enough to warrant consideration, even if it turns out to be bunk. We’ve already know that a Captain Blood Remake was in the air (although, I recently noticed that No Quarter Given noted a Captain Blood remake was in the works back in their May ’94 issue – see what I mean about movie gossip?), but this is the first mention I’ve seen that indicates it will be an outer space swashbuckler. Imagine the possibilities… zero-g fencing, rum squeezed from a tube, and all the spaniards (or their alien equivelant) played by Alf.
In seriousness, no word yet on whether this will be more serious or tongue-in-cheek, whether it will be a space full of aliens a la Star Wars or more of a true space frontier full of nothing but settlers and explorers such as Firefly. It will be fun to see if this idea has merit, and if so how it develops.
Two words for the studio- Treasure Planet. Look it up. The movie that LOST the most money at the box office. Yeah great idea- Pirate movie in space. This is why Hollywood sucks. Everybody is trying to be “cool” and “edgy” when they should concentrate on PLOT and STORY. (See POTC 2&3) Hopefully. like you said this is just another stupid rumor and they will make a real pirate movie.
PS I read the Prequel to Treasure Island “Flint & Silver” which was pretty good. It may also be made into a movie but if these fools get a hold of it I’m sure it will be set on Planet 10!
Sounds like a bunch crap to me captain blood in space. ill past really now whos the bad guy darth vader in a pirate outfit
I’ve been trying to find an article all day written by a hollywood script writer, explaining why movies are so bad.
He gave the example of some unknown writer named “Bill Shakespeare” and he has a kickass script called “Romeo and Juliet”. A movie studio decides to pick it up, but decides it needing rewrites for the big screem, so he hires it out to a good friend of his to rewrite it. Now the film company executives want it to follow themes with other recent blockbuster pictures that have grossed so much, etc., so they change the theme of the movie to be modern day, and not just families at war, but countries. Then into detail about how the producer wants a rewrite to make it fit more with his ‘vision of the movie’- suddenly it became Romeo and Juliet in space, and another rewrite by another writer. Then they need a good director, someone with a vision. They hire the guy who did 300, and he wants there to be all sorts of slow-motions and explosions and shit, so he has another writer he knows pen in longer action sequences. Then the stuido says that if they’re making a sci-fi love story, they’re gonna need to sink a lot of money into the special effects if anyone’s gonna believe it. They propose that the story become sort of like independence day, that an alien nation comes to destroy earth, and that a human falls in love with an alien, the ultimate love torn between two warring species. To do that, they need to guarantee that people will come and see it to reimburse their 500 million dollar investment, and they want at least 5 A list stars in the leading roles, so once again the story is rewritten by studio writers. It’s decided that Romeo will be played by Ahnuld Schwartzenagarrrrrr. Arnold says the only way he will come out of movie retirement is to make sure this is the defining movie of his career, so the character he plays is rewritten into a hulking, badass one-liner character that he always wants to plays, rewritten by some of the older writers from his heyday. Then they go and hire Catherine Zeta Jones to play Juliet. She doesn’t want her character to be so passive, as Bill had her, but to be a soldier that goes to war for her species, and is a strong character that girls everywhere can look up to. So the script is once again rewritten by someone she thinks recently had a good uplifting movie. Then you have 3 other A list stars that do the same thing to their characters, all with seperate writers, all seperate versions. Finally the director looks at all the changes to the characters, in 6 different versions, decides that their interactions are all wrong, and rewrites it again without anyone’s knowledge. The producer gets this copy, decides he doesn’t like all the changes, and makes his own rewrite with the first writer friend of his just a week before the meeting with the big wig’s at the studio. When the studio sees it, they like it, but want to change a few things, so it’s once again rewritten by yet again another writing team. Finally it comes back to the producer, then to the director, who once again isn’t happy with it, and between the two of them they hire more writers to once again rewrite it. By the time that actual filming starts, you have hardly anything left of the original story that Bill Shakespeare wrote. And eventually more things are changed in front of the camera, and by the time the film reaches audiences, you’d never guess that the script actually started from Bill Shakespeare himself, and not from a cliff note at best.
And that’s why most hollywood movies suck- especially the ones that are coming from stories you’re already familar with.
Think I would much prefer a remake of the real Captain Blood and leave the outer space crap to the techno-graphics studios…
Wow – a bit more venom out there on this idea than I was anticipating. I suppose I can understand why, but personally I think Hollywood is just as likely to flub up an “accurate” movie as they are something more outlandish such as this. I’m more than happy to wait and see what they come up with, and then praise or condemn it accordingly.
This movie sounds god-awful. Am I the only one whose thinking of “Ice Pirates”?
Red, If you’re thinking about ice pirates (awesome) it’s probably because you picked up a nasty case of space herpes.
So… I actually think a Captain Blood in Space movie could be kinda’ cool. But mind you, I say COULD be KINDA cool. Don’t get me wrong, I honestly expect it to be crap. But really, the premise has merit. I’ve been waiting for a good space pirate story ever since Firefly went off the air. But then they might as well just write their own damn space pirate story, instead of ripping off Rafael Sabatini.
Captain Blood is one of my all time favorite pirate stories, and I’d much rather them give us a straight-up, true-to-the-source-material remake, and maybe THEN a space version. But sadly this is not how things are done. I can only pray that this is a complete rumor.
Incidentally, did anyone here ever see the godawful Beowulf in Space movie with that hack Christopher Lambert? Maybe te studio needs to rent it.