DavidSGoyer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Any movie that begins with a dog wearing a human mask is in serious trouble. If it wants to use that kind of dream snippet as a launch pad for exploring a demented and increasingly bizarre world, if it wants to embrace a loony aesthetic and milk it for all it's worth, wonderful. Deliver a solid, jolting, dazzling, surprising thriller, and all will be forgiven.

On the other hand, if it desperately wants to be taken seriously, if it proceeds in a very measured and sober manner, if it becomes increasingly sedate as it calmly plods through tedious exposition, then you have a mess on your hands.

The Unborn looks like a ghost story, feels like a ghost story, and kinda sounds like a ghost story, but it's dead on arrival. Because writer/director David S. Goyer has been associated with a host of projects with which I have a natural affinity, I was cautiously optimistic that his fourth directorial outing (after ZigZag, Blade: Trinity, and The Invisible) might reflect more of the pulpy, noirish mood and momentum that are evident in some of the best scripts for which he's been credited in part or in whole (Dark City, Blade II, Batman Begins).

Instead, all the juice has been drained from The Unborn. Not even the sight of the lovely, lean and fit Odette Yustman, whose last name became Yowza! when the trailer and pics first hit the net, can salvage the film from mediocrity.

Remember Supermax, David S.Goyer's Green Arrow movie? If you've forgotten, don't beat yourself up -- I think it has vanished off the radar for most people in the last year, simply because there are too many superheroes to keep track of.

Goyer plans to break the superhero mold with his Green Arrow movie -- rather than the same old origin story, he intends to send the green-clad hero to prison after being framed for a crime. Stripped of his identity, he must team up with the supervillains he helped put away in order to regain his freedom. The Shawshank Redemption with superpowers! (Here's our original story if you want to read all the fine points.)

According to Latino Review, who read a copy of the script, the movie will be chock full of lesser DC Comics villains: Merlyn the archer, the Tattooed Man, the Aryan Nation (comprised of Iron Cross, Heatmonger and Backlash), Japanese assassin Shock Trauma, female shape-shifter Gemini, Icicle ... and a bunch more (get the full list over at LR).

But possibly, more intriguing than all the obscure characters is the possibility that Joker, Riddler and Lex Luthor are all inmates of the Supermax prison. All three appear in the script, but at this point are only cameos. I can't imagine all of these villains are going to appear on one screen, do you? And would that be the equivalent of superhero overdose?

Like many passionate but busy fans of science fiction cinema, I "discovered" Dark City just a little too late -- but I've slowly become one of the flick's biggest fans. Aside from a few minor gripes (yes, the narration), I think it's an absolute masterpiece; a nifty mixture of lofty sci-fi, moody film noir, convoluted "whodunnit" and eye-popping spectacle. And I know I'm not alone in my appreciation of the Alex Proyas film.

So here's some good news for my friends: According to BD.com, Dark City co-screenwriter David S. Goyer just dropped a few juicy nuggets regarding a digital upgrade: "In addition to the special features, Goyer reveals that there's more to the re-release than just special FX upgrades. "[They re-did] the score and the cuts a little longer," he reveals, "all of the parties involved did fairly lenghtly interviews with us, they'll be incluced on there." New FX? Fresh featurettes? A possible theatrical re-release? Wowwy wow, that's awesome. But this new DVD better keep that Roger Ebert commentary track!

Check out Monika's earlier piece on the Dark City revisions right here. And I can't believe I made it all the way through this post without mentioning Jennifer Connelly...

According to Jewish folklore (or at least according to a really scary story my rabbi once told me), a "dybbuk" is an angry, undead spirit that possesses a human being. So perhaps writer / director David S. Goyer pitched this concept to his new Plantium Dunes bosses as "Poltergeist meets The Exorcist, only Jewish." Seems unlikely he'd start the meeting with "Hey, anyone remember any ghost stories they once heard in Hebrew school?"

Either way, The Hollywood Reporter is (ahem) reporting that Goyer and three actors have signed on to an as-yet-untitled "supernatural thriller" about "a 19-year-old girl who is haunted by a dybbuk, the soul of a dead person barred from heaven, in the form of a young boy who perished in Auschwitz." (Glad to see the Holocaust can act as inspiration for a Platinum Dunes supernatural thriller.) The young lady will be played by Odette Yustman, who is currently wowing audiences as "that really hot girl who looks a little like Jennifer Connelly" in Cloverfield. Also on board is the always-busy Gary Oldman as a "spiritual specialist" and someone called Cam Gigandet as the hot girl's boyfriend.

Fingers crossed on this project. If there's anything lamer than a flat PG-13 thriller, it's probably a flat PG-13 thriller that invokes memories of Auschwitz. Still, after flicks like Dark City, Blade and Batman Begins, DSG has earned some benefit of the doubt by now. Production begins a few weeks from now in Chicago.

Now that John Carpenter's back catalog has been well and truly ransacked by the Remake Brigade, producers looking for another dose of horror-centric brand recognition must look to other auteurs ... and it looks like David Cronenberg is the next victim in line. A few months back we reported that screenwriter David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins) and director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2, Saw 3, Saw 4) would be tackling one of Cronenberg's old hits: The 1981 sci-fi thriller Scanners. Yes, the one with the exploding heads.

While he was out doing the junket thing for his latest film, a remake of a nifty Dutch Swedish chiller called The Invisible, Mr. Goyer let a few details slip regarding the direction the new Scanners will take under the charge of Dimension Films: "Cronenberg embeds so much subtext into his stories ... So we've tried to keep the spirit of that and kind of transpose that into a post-9/11 world, if you can imagine what 'Scanners' would be involved in in that kind of world. That's what we're attempting to do here."

The popular screenwriter then called Cronenberg a genius and went back to talking about The Invisible, but not before mentioning that this new version will have a much bigger budget to work with than did the original Scanners. (The irony is that Cronenberg didn't actually need a whole lot of money to make a flick so memorable that it spawned a remake more than two decades later.) Sources indicate that the new-fangled Scanners will most likely start production some time early next year. Goyer's been keeping pretty busy, too: He's also working on a Green Arrow project called Super Max and an adaptation of James Owen's Here, There Be Dragons.

A few years back I wanted to do some coverage of the L.A. Screamfest, but was unable to fly out west to attend the outpouring of genre goodness ... so one of the (very cool) festival reps sent me a handful of screener discs! It worked out great: the festival got a little extra coverage, and I got to see some pretty cool horror-type flicks. The best of the batch was easily Den Osynlige (aka The Invisible), a Swedish thriller about a young man who gets killed, but comes back as a ghost (the very next morning) and tries to determine who murdered him.

As with many fine genre films from around the world, Den Osynlige was quickly commissioned for an American remake. David S. Goyer (Blade: Trinity) is the man behind the camera this time out. The new version was written by Christine Roum and Mick Davis, the guy who wrote the original flick. (And to be fair, both movies are actually based on a novel by Mats Wahl, so I'll let you argue as to what a "remake" truly is.)

The new Invisible comes baring a lot of newcomer-type faces, although I did notice a few names like Marcia Gay Harden, Callum Keith Rennie and Chris Marquette in the cast list. Disney's Touchstone is planning to unveil The Invisible on January 26th. Oh, and here's that trailer I promised you.