Chris Wedge Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Will a video game movie based on a game with no characters or storyline whatsoever be more successful than a Max Payne or Tomb Raider? Fox and EA are going to give it a shot and find out, as Variety reports that they are setting up Spore as a feature film. Chris Wedge is attached to direct, with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland writing the screenplay.

Spore is a colorful, family friendly game that allows you to build a variety of fanciful creatures. But perhaps most notably, it allows you to evolve them. Your creatures start out as microscopic organisms, develops into a complex animal, and becomes a social and intelligent creature. You help guide its society from a primitive stage all the way to space travel. It's a very organic game not only in its single-player conception, but because it allows you to share your creatures and your worlds with other gamers, and create a comprehensive universe at the Sporepedia. Fittingly, the Sporepedia acted as kind of historical documented, and recorded everything glorious and dubious about the player created worlds.

So, when a game is all about playing Supreme Being, how do you make a movie out of it? Wedge isn't sure yet, but he feels the property is rich in possibility. "I'm always looking for unique worlds to go to in animation. From every perspective -- visually, thematically and comedically -- the world of Spore provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen." It might just create something quite original off, if they kept a bit of evolution in its storyline. Haven't you always wanted to see a cartoon picketed by Kirk Cameron?

If you have ever wandered into the children's section of a bookstore, you've undoubtedly seen the work of William Joyce. If you have small ones, you may have even read them. Joyce is a wonderful author, one of the rare picture book authors who write as well as they draw. Few of Joyce's books have made it to the big screen (a truly curious thing), but one of his more recent efforts will be coming to theaters near you, as Variety reports that The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs has been re-optioned by Fox.

At the moment, though, the story behind the option is causing more of a stir than Joyce's work. Pixar and Fox were both fighting over The Leaf Men, which was originally set up at Fox with Chris Wedge directing, and a script by Joyce and James V. Hart. Allegedly, Wedge was then given permission to shop the project to other studios, and Pixar immediately said "Bring it here! We'll make it!" (Wedge and Joyce both have good history with Pixar. Wedge is friends with John Lasseter, and Joyce helped design characters for Toy Story and A Bug's Life.) But when all involved moved to close the deal, Fox said "No way. We're keeping it." Now it's all back at Fox, but at least there's no hard feelings towards Wedge.

Now we just have to hope that Fox Animation makes a good movie, because The Leaf Men is a lush and enchanting book starring a group of doodle bugs who reside in an elderly woman's garden. She falls ill, and the garden falls into disrepair fermented by an evil spider queen. The doodle bugs call on the legendary Leaf Men (characters who Joyce's daughter described as "so handsome!") to help save them. A bit like A Bug's Life, but more along the lines of Robin Hood than The Seven Samurai. It'll be beautiful if handled right. Now, if Pixar would just make Dinosaur Bob ....

Even with The Golden Compass sort of flaming out last fall, kids' fantasy continues to be a hot commodity. Witness the treatment that Brian Selznick's highly acclaimed illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret is currently receiving. The adaptation is being ushered into production by GK Films, whose last project was The Departed. They've recruited in-demand screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd) to write the screenplay. And the film will be directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots), trying to make an Andrew Adamson-like break into live-action having mastered CGI animation. The plan is to start filming this fall, presumably with an eye toward getting the movie out by Christmas of next year.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret isn't just any old children's book. Its author says that it's "not exactly a novel, and it's not quite a picture book, and it's not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things." The New York Times called it "a silent film on paper." It's about an orphaned boy working as a clock cleaner in a Paris train station who gets embroiled in a mystery involving another of the train station's denizens. Sounds like fun, and also like an opportunity to make something generic out of something unique. Ah, but that's unfairly pessimistic (even if Robots was awful) -- I'm actually a sucker for this tyke-fantasy stuff. Another one for the ole' reading list...