It’s amazing to see some filmmakers taking massive leaps these days. Case in point, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ debut feature was the cute and charming indie “Kings Of Summer” and his follow-up is the long-in-the-making “Kong: Skull Island,” a movie of epic scale likely 20x bigger than his introductory film.
A big part of the making-of narrative seems to be reinvention. “A big part of our Kong was I wanted to make something that gave the impression that he was a lonely God,” Vogt-Roberts recently told EW. “He was a morose figure, lumbering around this island.”
And the director isn’t shying away from an emotional quality in the monstrous primate. “Kong’s always been a little bit tragic. You can’t tell exactly from the still, but the way that he walks on the island, the way that he goes from place to place, I wanted to communicate something about his headspace and about the way that, in certain ways, he’s the protector of this island and then in other ways he’s killing time.”
Written by John Gatins and Max Borenstein, Legendary Pictures has promised that the story will honor the foundations of existing King Kong lore, but will place Skull Island in an entirely new, distinct timeline. Here’s the vague synopsis:
When a scientific expedition to an uncharted island awakens titanic forces of nature, a mission of discovery becomes an explosive war between monster and man.
Makes you think the story will be a ten little Indians-esque tail where the cast gets knocked off one by one the closer they get to Kong. The cast sure is big enough that a lot of characters will be expendable. The film stars Tom Hiddleston as the lead (a British Special Forces vet) along with Brie Larson (a war photographer), Samuel L. Jackson, Jing Tian, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham and Toby Kebbell.
“Kong: Skull Island”opens in theaters on March 10, 2017.
