Quickly. Our man in the field at Comic-Con, Drew Morton sat down with “Battle: Los Angeles” and “The Green Hornet” producer Neal Moritz.
Moritz spoke to us about both those projects and if you’ve seen his IMDB page, you know he has about 20 projects or so in development.
One that we were particularly interested/worried about was “Man-Witch,” an old Todd Phillips project that Jack Black was once attached to and Zach Galifianakis once seemed interested in, but decided to take Phillips’ “Due Date” instead. We thought that that move may have killed it, but Moritz says it will eventually happen.
“It’s one of those things that at some point we’ll get to,” Moritz said, “But I have so many projects lined up first — we’re doing “Fast and Furious” right now, we’re in post on ‘Battle,’ post on ‘Green Hornet,’ we’re going to do the “Total Recall” [redo] we’re going to do “R.I.P.D.” [with Ryan Reynolds], [the potential Adam McKay vehicle] ‘The Boys,’ [Jonah Hill’s] “21 Jump Street,” there’s just a lot on our plate right now.”
However, he did confirm a few things to us like the Marvel adaptation of “Luke Cage: Power Man” is a film he’s no longer involved with and said he hopes to have Bryan Singer’s “Jack the Giant Killer” shooting, “before the end of the year.”
Suffice to say Moritz is a very, very busy man and a confident one at that. Was there controversy around the decision to hire Michel Gondry for the “The Green Hornet?” Yes, but he didn’t care.
“It was a very controversial decision for the fans, but I have known Michel for 15 years and I’ve always been a fan of his work and a fan of him personally,” he said. “We looked at each other and thought, ‘why not?’ And he and Seth [Rogen] had a great rapport, and talent really responded to him, and my thought was, ‘Make this thing really visually interesting, Michel.’ I mean he knows how to do characters, and now it was take all those skills you’ve learned and apply them to a mainstream commercial movie.” As for a “Green Hornet 2,” he says, “we’ll see what happens.”
And then Aaron Eckhart as an action lead in “Battle: Los Angeles?” The producer had no reservations either.
“I’m a huge fan of Aaron, I met him on something else. When this project came up, I thought, there are very few men that can actually play a real military guy that I would really believe. And that was the impetus for casting him. He was the only person we went to for the role, we loved him, and he was our man.”
About the “The Boys” which Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (“Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights”) might direct, he says the picture will be “an R-rated movie. But I wouldn’t say it’s going to be a movie with blood splattering all over everyone all the time.”
Battle: Los Angeles is scheduled for a March 11, 2011 release date. “The Green Hornet” hits theaters January 14, 2011.