When it comes to franchises, we guess the mandate is, strike when the iron is lukewarm. On the heels of the nearly $500 million worldwide gross of “Clash of the Titans,” the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are gearing up for a full 3D shoot in January on a part two for director Jonathan Liebesman. Why the rush? It looks like it’s only a matter of time before Sam Worthington signs up for another go-round on Pandora for James Cameron, so the WB wants to claim him before any other time-sensitive franchises.
Who is Jonathan Liebesman, you ask? Prepare to see his name linked to tons of geeks properties in the near future. The heat around the young filmmaker came from a Roald Dahl short he completed in high school, getting him the gig for the low-rent chiller “Darkness Falls.” He earned a lot of genre respect for shooting a fifteen minute short for “The Ring” DVD’s that bridged the gap between the first two films, while also directing a financially-successful “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” prequel. So yeah, he works cheap and profitable, and no doubt he’d be considered one of the Masters of Horror, considering their low expectations.
Liebesman has a big budget actioner coming up, the Aaron Eckhart-fronted “Battle: Los Angeles,” that has Sony execs impressed. He earned that gig by filming an unsolicited CGI-filled audition reel, much like the recent “Mortal Kombat” internet clip, so he’s nothing if not ambitious. His last film, the pyrotechnics-free “The Killing Room,” quietly went straight-to-DVD, but no one seems to be troubled by that. Liebsman had been preparing an adaptation of “Odysseus” for WB with the “300” producers when they figured, hey, let’s make these ideas franchiseable!
We’re not sure where you go with a sequel, as the first film was generally nonsensical, edited and re-edited with a hacksaw. We’ve heard the DVD will clear up a lot of this confusion with a number of deleted scenes, but a lot of the excised footage concerns material that was reshot and/or contradicted with the final product. In other words, if the DVD doesn’t sell well, expect to see the term “reboot” obnoxiously thrown around. Sam Worthington declined to comment, as he was busy listlessly grimacing.