Now that Tim Burton is a billion-dollar director due to the massive success of “Alice In Wonderland,” he has the pick of the litter for his next project. A handful of films have cropped up in recent months as potential vehicles for Burton including “Maleficent,” a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” that would potentially star Angelina Jolie and has a script by ‘Alice’ scribe Linda Woolverton, and of course, “Dark Shadows,” which last we heard was being rumored for a fall start date with Burton BFF4Life Johnny Depp (feels slightly doubtful now as there hasn’t been news in months).
Another project that was quickly kicked around is “Monsterpocalypse,” an adaptation of a board game (seriously) that essentially involves players controlling Godzilla-like monsters that would smash the hell out of your opponent’s city. Back in May, it was announced that Burton was sought out by DreamWorks to be a “creative catalyst” on the project in what seemed to be the very early stages of its inception, with the only other talent involved being the board game’s Matt Wilson being involved in a producer capacity.
Well, things have moved forward in a big way as John August is in negotiations to pen the screenplay of the film while talks are ongoing with Tim Burton to move him from his vague creative role to the director’s chair. The hiring of August seems to be a fairly big indication that DreamWorks wants Burton behind the camera. As you might recall, the duo worked on “Big Fish,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Corpse Bride,” and August also penned the screenplay for “Dark Shadows” (on top of that August and Burton also have the 3-D stop-motion animated version of “Frankenweenie”– originally a 1984 short — set up at Disney).
The question of when or if this will happen remains contingent on a few factors. Firstly, if “Dark Shadows” moves forward with a fall start date, that will push “Monsterpocalypse” to the back burner. But with Depp going from “The Tourist” to “The Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” and with a commitment to shoot the Pancho Villa biopic “Wild Roses, Tender Roses” with Emir Kusturica early the next year, the guy might want to take a breather between projects.
In addition to that, both “Dark Shadows” and “Monsterpocalypse” are both, more or less, monster-based films and even if Burton chooses the latter, Warner Bros. may put up a fight if their Johnny Depp blockbuster is delayed.
Frankly, both these projects aren’t particularly exciting and we’d rather see Burton do neither of them and go back and crank out an “Ed Wood,” but we’ve given up on that happening a long time ago.