'Sahara' Director Thought Film Would Spawn Indy-Like Franchise
Filed under: Action, Celebrities and Controversy
Remember that lawsuit that Jessica Barnes posted about in February? To recap -- there was this big blockbuster film, or rather, there was this movie that filmmakers hoped would be a big hit -- Sahara. While it might have had a short rule in the box office, the movie pretty much flopped. Grossing less than $70 million, and having a budget of almost twice that, well, it leaves a bunch of people angry and disappointed. So, we've got the author of the original novel, Clive Cussler, blaming the producers, Crusader Entertainment. They, in turn, are counter-suing that the author not only badmouthed them in the press, but that he also made racial slurs during production.The trial has been underway for a while now, and jurors have heard testimony from screenwriters, executives and lawyers about the doomed film's struggles. The latest in the parade -- director Breck Eisner. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he says that he was aware that it had some problems, but knew that he could "nail this film" and had no idea how big the problems were. Not only that, but he thought that this would be the beginning of a film franchise, just like Indiana Jones! I'm not sure why Eisner would think that he could take a movie that he knew had problems, and make it into a huge, unforgettable blockbuster franchise. Youthful exuberance? Naive hope? He was replacing Rob Bowman, and had a script that went through tons of revisions and tons of screenwriters. That's not really a solid base to start from. Oh well. No big franchise for him. However, he does have the Creature from the Black Lagoon in development, but that news just makes me wish that Sahara had done well. I don't want anyone touching my beloved monster movie!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-13-2007 @ 12:27AM
Donna A. said...
Maybe I might be a mouth breather. But I liked Sahara. To bad they didn't make another one like it.
Donna A.
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4-13-2007 @ 12:29PM
Akbar Fazil said...
Well, given the large number of novels that Cussler has written about Dirk Pitt one could easily see that a huge film franchise could be made out of them. Unfortunately, hollywood screwed up on this. Ive read pretty much all of the Dirk Pitt books and they all can easily translate to film without much effort. Sahara was one of the best books and got mutilated on screen.
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4-13-2007 @ 3:04PM
PhilR8 said...
It was an okay movie, at best. If you had to put a review blurb on a movie poster, you'd put: "It's not a complete trainwreck: it's kinda fun, if you see it for free."
Looking at Breck Eisner's imdb profile and I notice he's Michael Eisner's son. It'd be easy to use that as a reason for why the film isn't good... well, whatever, that's where I'm going with this. The man put his name on A Sound of Thunder, for gods sake. He doesn't know a good movie from a hole in the ground.
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