Fincher's Heavy Metal Vs. Paramount
Zodiac Director Producing Movie With Kevin Eastman, Blur Studio
Sep 5, 2008
David Fincher (Se7en) pulled Heavy Metal from Paramount due to a battle over another movie, according to magazine publisher Kevin Eastman.
Previous reports claimed that Paramount had balked at developing an update to the 1981 cult hit because Fincher wanted a hard-R rating, while Paramount preferred a PG-rated Heavy Metal.
But in an online interview with RGBFilter.com, Eastman (who co-created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) said that Fincher actually pulled the plug after the studio started playing hardball over his current project.
Paramount allegedly didn't like the fact that another Fincher project, the live-action The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was clocking in at around 3 hours, and they wanted Fincher to trim it down.
"We developed (Heavy Metal) for Paramount in January of this year," Eastman told RGB Filter. "And it was time for them to make a decision, and they were at odds with Fincher over another project, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, (because) they wanted him to reduce the running time . . . and so they said, 'Until you step up to do what we want you to do with Benjamin, we're not going to greenlight any other (of your) movies.'
"And David said, 'Fine, f**k you, I'm going to set up Heavy Metal up somewhere else,' so we jumped over to Sony and set it up there . . . And we're pulling together the rest of our issues and we'll be in production this fall."
Zack Snyder, Guillermo Del Toro, Gore Verbinski in Heavy Metal?
Now that Heavy Metal is developing at Sony, Eastman and executive producer Fincher is assembling the directing talent for the 8 or 9 episodes that will make up the movie.
"We have a $50 million budget," Eastman says, "Fincher's directing (an episode), Guillermo Del Toro (The Hobbit, Hellboy II) wants to direct one, Zack Snyder (300, The Watchmen) wants to direct one, Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) wants to direct one."
If this happens, they would join Fincher, Eastman himself and Blur Animation Studios head Tim Miller in the directors' chair.
The movie is tentatively scheduled to be released "sometime in August, 2010," says Eastman.
Can Del Toro Do Heavy Metal?
Although Verbinski and Snyder seem likely to jump on a Heavy Metal update, Del Toro's involvement looks a bit more tenuous.
The Pan's Labyrinth director has a packed slate of films in development – the afore-mentioned Lord of the Rings prequel (which may become two films), Drood (a historical fiction about Charles Dickens), a Frankenstein remake, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde update, a Slaughterhouse Five remake, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness, a rumoured Hellboy III, an adaptation of David Moody's novel Hater, and a gothic romance script he co-wrote called Crimson Peak – which, along with a slew of producing projects, may take him until 2017.
Perhaps he has an afternoon free.
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