The Week In Geek: Kevin Smith’s Reality Show, Wolverine Gets A Femme Fatale, & Lone Ranger Not Dead?

Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash To Hit Basic Cable

Just because Kevin Smith is quitting making movies after his next flick, his hockey movie titled Hit Somebody, it doesn’t mean he’s getting out of the filmed entertainment business. Actually, far from it. Smith has just sold AMC a six episode reality series is set in his Red Bank New Jersey comic book shop, Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash. The proprietors of said establishment, Kevin’s boyhood friends Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson, and the antics that go on in their store, are also the subject of the weekly podcast “Tell ‘em, Steve-Dave!” (a reference to a line from Smith’s movie Mallrats), Apparently, at some point when looking for reality content for AMC, the suits at the network were told about the podcast and realized that it would make for a great reality show, what with all the crazy stories of people looking to trade their collectibles in for some quick cash. Kinda like Pawn Stars, only for geeks. 

As soon as the show’s pick up by AMC was announced, Kevin Smith released this statement: 

“Draper.  Meth.  Zombies.  This show couldn’t be on a better network.  AMC is to television what Miramax was to cinema back when I first got in the game: they’re the premier destination for any story-teller looking to spin an offbeat yarn that no other outlet has the stones to touch. And as if I didn’t love them enough, now they’re putting my friends on TV!   I’m ecstatic, proud, and extremely lucky to be in bed with a network I watch religiously anyway.  And if they’d pushed just a little harder in the negotiations, I’d have done this show for no payment beyond early access to every episode of Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.” 

Wolverine To Add A Viper?

Screenwriter Mark Bomback (Jack the Giant Killer,as well as the upcoming remake of Total Recall) is has been tapped by Fox to re-write Christopher McQuarrie’s script for Jame’s Mangold’s The Wolverine.  Apparently,  the story is still set to be based on the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller 1982 mini-series. The script has been praised pretty universally from those lucky few who have read it, so I wonder why a major re-write is needed. I was hoping between X-Men First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Fox was turning a new leaf, but redoing what seems like a solid script by the guy who wrote Live Free And Die Hard and the remake of Race To Witch Mountain doesn’t put me at ease.

The entire cast will be comprised of Japanese and Japanese-American actors except for the character of Viper, who’s described as the white secretary for Japan’s Minister of Justice.  Of course, in the Marvel comics version, Viper is the green haired Madame Hydra, who has tangled with Wolverine on many occasions and even married him (not sure what the status of that marriage is. Was that ret-conned out? Someone out there who is a bigger Wolverine fan than me is gonna need to tell me.) Due to HYDRA being used in the Captain America movie, I’m not sure if they can be used in a Fox X-Men flick, but maybe Fox snagged the rights to Viper at some point separate to the rest of HYDRA. Like I mentioned in last week’s column, filming for the Wolverine has been pushed to early 2012 in Vancouver, so we won’t see this movie till 2013 at the earliest at this point.

Amy Adams To Possibly Star In American Version Of The Orphanage 

One of the best horror films of the past decade was the Guillermo del Toro produced ghost story The Orphanage. The Spanish film, directed by J.A. Bayona, was released in 2007, and ever since then there have been rumors of an American Remake. Now it looks like four years later, the remake is getting some traction at New Line Cinema, with Amy Adams circling the part of the lead for director Mark Pellington. Guillermo del Toro is producing the remake just like he produced the original, so that bodes somewhat well for this version sticking to the source somewhat. Hopefully this will be better than most crappy American remakes of great foreign horror films, like the horrible Jessica Alba version of Korean horror classic The Eye. When asked about the remake of his movie, director of the original film Bayona had this to say:  

“The Americans have all the money in the world but can’t do anything, while we can do whatever we want but don’t have the money” and “The American industry doesn’t take chances, that’s why they make remakes of movies that were already big hits” 

Yup, this statement sounds right on the money to me. Hopefully The Orphanage will fare better than so many other horror remakes before it. 

Long Ranger Movie Not Dead After All? 

A few weeks back I reported that Disney had pulled the plug on the Gore Verbinski directed big screen version of The Lone Ranger,starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, due to the reported budget of $250 million dollars. I may have spoken too soon, as now it seems that Disney is looking to try and salvage this project at a lower budget, and possibly with a new director. *sigh* I can’t keep up. Problem is,  Johnny Depp is very loyal to his directors (just look at how many Tim Burton movies he has made) and has now made four films with Verbinski. According to those close to Johnny Depp’s camp, if Verbinski walks, then so does Johnny. Disney is still trying to bring the budget down, but want this at lower than $200 million no matter what. 

I personally hope Disney sticks to their guns on this one. $250 million is a ridiculous budget for a western, even a western that is said to have some werewolves in it as this version is said to have. If District 9 can be made for $30 million bucks, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes for something less than $100, there is no real reason why The Long Ranger can’t be made for less that two hundred frickin’ million dollars, werewolves or not. It just feels like greed on the part of Verbinski and Depp, who are looking to get ridiculous upfront salaries for doing this project.  The one person I feel bad for in the whole scenario is Armie Hammer, who was set to star as the title character, and this might have been his deserved break into stardom after a great turn in The Social Network last year.

Small Tidbit of Info of David Fincher’s 20,000 Leagues Remake Surface 

And speaking of Disney, the first news to leak in a long time about the upcoming remake of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, set to be directed by David Fincher, came in an interview with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns over at Cinemablend.com. Apparently from the sound of it, several liberties are set to be taken with the original Jules Verne novel, maybe just keeping the basic premise and changing everything else. According to Burns, “his job isn’t to turn a book into a movie, it’s to be inspired by the book and then go write a movie.”  

While the movie isn’t going to be totally motion capture, according to Fincher, it will be “70% mo cap, maybe more.” The original 1954 film was a big success for Disney back in the day, and getting an A List director like Fincher adds a lot of pedigree to what could be just another remake of a classic novel. But the question is can a director like Fincher, not known for being very compromising, work for a studio like Disney? Time will tell if this doesn’t fall apart like Aronofsky on Wolverine. Some directors are just not cut out for making big studio tentpoles, and my gut tells me Fincher is one of those.