Steve Alten Can't Shut Up About 'Meg'

by Christopher Campbell Jul 14th 2007 // 3:31PM

Filed under: Horror, Thrillers, Disney, New Line

All of you Meg fans, including Cinematical horror expert Scott Weinberg, should be happy to hear that the movie is not quite dead in the water yet. Novelist Steve Alten, who has written four Meg books, is still having ongoing discussions with other studios now that New Line has abandoned the project. He mentioned this during an exclusive interview with the Monsterfest Blog, and he also stated that Jan De Bont is still the best director to handle an adaptation of his giant shark tale. However, the script by Shane Salerno will likely not be able to be transported to whatever studio picks the thing up.

In the interview, Alten details the history of the Meg movie rights, and now I feel pretty bad for ever criticizing modern novelists for having it so easy when Hollywood comes calling. Alten claims he had to sell his car just to get the first book edited. Then he sold the rights to Disney/Hollywood Pictures and was able to buy a house. Then Disney didn't end up making the thing and Alten lost the house. He likely had thought he was on top again when New Line acquired the rights, but obviously now the author is in a downward slope once again. Alten says that the problem at Disney was that neither a script by Tom Wheeler or a script from Jeff Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) met with execs approval, and then all those execs left the studio and Meg was forgotten. He doesn't go into the reasons for the project's failure at New Line, but we had heard before he felt the studio treated it like "an unwanted stepchild." Hopefully Alten can find the right studio execs who will treat Meg like a media-friendly celebrity treats an adopted child.

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Tags: cinematical, film, jan de bont, JanDeBont, meg, movie, steve alten, SteveAlten

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