Back in the good ol’ days, a Hollywood film disaster was either a tax write-off, fodder for a good book or an excuse to throw someone in director’s jail or simply blacklist them for a few years until they earned their cinematic goodwill back with a commercial project (hello Richard Kelly).
These days, it’s sadly just the excuse for another reboot; the now noxiously perverted idea of if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. So, while the stench of Tim Burton’s godawful 2001 remake “Planet Of The Apes,” was enough to curdle the stomach of any cinemagoer, 20th Century Fox saw it as a challenge to do better.
While we love the persevering can-do attitude, it’s obviously not motivated in anything deeper than the idea of a potential cash-cow is sitting around dormant — so, let’s brand it one more time and get it on the field (to use your run-of-the-mill bovine/film metaphor of course).
As previously reported, Fox are hot to trot on getting a “Planet Of The Apes” — and are simply hot to trot to fill their 2011 summer tentpole schedule — reboot off the ground and while directors like Robert Rodriguez and Kathryn Bigelow passed on the project, that didn’t evidently dissuade, Rupert Wyatt, the director of the little-seen British prison movie “The Escapist,” from signing on.
As mentioned a few weeks ago, the film will shoot this summer and now it has an official title and release date, in “Rise of the Apes” and June 24, 2011 according to Variety. The script was written by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (“The Relic”). No word on cast yet, but god, best of luck with this one. We have pretty much zero interest. Oh and apparently this is kinda of a prequel in the ‘Apes’ timeline if you care. Whatever, but sure to stick a bug up the asses of nerds who still have interest is the fact that the apes will be CGI-made this time. That actually amuses us to no end. The only thing worse would be 3D-CGI made by Tim Burton.
Summer 2011 is heating up and almost as competitive as summer 2012 which will boast “The Avengers” and “Batman 3” (or whatever the hell Nolan ends up calling it). If release dates hold, summer 2011 will see a showdown between, “Green Lantern,” “Cars 2,” “X-Men: First Class,” “Transformers 3,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II,” “Captain America: The First Avenger,” Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens” and to a lesser extent Steven Spielberg’s “War Horses.”
This doesn’t even include May which will feature, Marvel’s “Thor,” Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and Warner Bros. “The Hangover 2” — and possibly even J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8,” now that “Mission Impossible IV,” vacated that Paramount early summer spot for Christmas instead.