20th Century Fox have acquired the rights to “Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw,” the story of cult-hero Colton Harris-Moore, and are reportedly setting up a possible directing vehicle for David Gordon Green with his, Green, Jody Hill and Danny McBride’s Mandate Pictures subsidary, Rough House Pictures, producing.
Known as the “Barefoot Burglar” due to his preference to prowl without footwear, fresh-faced Harris-Moore is a modern-day Robin Hood with his exploits earning over twenty-five thousands fans on Facebook. The 18-year-old juvenile escapee is most famous for his audacious, rogue lifestyle — he has been living in the woods of Washington State, self-taught himself how to drive and fly and has stolen cars, boats and planes in his attempts to elude authorities and capture all while continuing his criminal activities.
Harris-Moore is wanted on over 100 crimes with his extreme elusiveness likely due to his purchasing of GPS devices and police scanners online from stolen credit card numbers. He remains on the run to this day(!) with the above image being the last captured photo of him found on an abandoned digital camera. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood caught onto his story and we’re glad it’s with the Rough House crew rather than some Brett Ratner-type (frankly, Green loves what he calls, “shitkicker” stories and bad-ass rebels, so this is totally in his wheel house).
Considering Gordon-Green’s pre-stoner-comedy work, Harris-Moore’s story seems a perfect match for his sensibilities with the director even having already helmed a teen-on-the-run film with “Undertow” starring Jamie Bell, who we can’t help but think would be perfect for the role. It’s early days yet, however, with a writers only now being sought to adapt a book proposal (the aforementioned “Taking Flight’) by Bob Friel who profiled Harris-Moore in the aptly named adventure magazine, Outside.
Before then, Gordon-Green has babysitter-on-a-coke-run film “The Sitter,” starring Jonah Hill, and his potential remake of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” among his plethora of projects we discussed in a interview with the director at SXSW.
Details On Green’s The Sitter.
So speaking of, we just finished reading Blacklist script, “The Sitter” by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. It’s Green’s next project and it’s shooting in the fall. It’s essentially an edgier, R-Rated, “Adventure’s In Babysitting” with Jonah Hill playing a suspended college student who is forced to stay home for the summer and then is wrangled into babysitting by his single mother so she can go out on a date. From there Hill’s character is tasked with taking care of three hellion kids — one an anxious pill-popping headcase, the youngest a pre-teen Britney Spears-wannabe obsessed with Paris Hilton and vapidity and not understanding her oversexualized skeevy demeanor, and the last one being an adopted South American kid who’s fat and not too bright. As if the kids aren’t enough trouble, Hill’s self-centered girlfriend makes the night more difficult for the obsessive, dotting student by asking him to pick up some cocaine for her frat party. It’s a dumb move which he’ll learn to regret (pissed-off drug dealers), but he acquiesces and of course makes things worse by making the children into accomplices on a wild night that is out of control, near violent, comical, and yet still has its moments of dysfunctional family-like tenderness.
It’s funny, enjoyable and a quick read, but we can’t help but think the material is somewhat beneath Green and Hill and we try and say that with as little disrespect intended towards the writers as we can after dropping such a statement.The draft we read is only the first draft and dated early 2009, presumably Green and Hill have either a) received far newer drafts and or b) read this draft and thought the script had tons of potential that they could work with. That said, the script is good as it is and they’ll surely only improve upon it. However, we’re not sure who much more anyone could make it… important.
Maybe it’s just a “Pineapple Express”-like dumb, funny riff and we can appreciate that, we can, but after three, fairly silly pictures in a row (“Your Highness” comes out in October), we’re sort of hankering for Green to take on something with a bit more weight. And even if that’s a comedy with a bit more gravity to it.