Nightcrawlers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You will see this headline pass through your Google readers and your Twitter feeds today: "Mike Mitchell to Helm Monster Squad." Your heart will race, your skin will flush with fury, and you'll set off to your favorite site (hopefully it's Cinematical) to pound out your anger via your keyboard. Not another remake! Not The Monster Squad! But here's where I can reassure you. Calm down. It's not Fred Dekker and Shane Black's Monster Squad.

Let's let your heart rate settle back to normal. Is it? All right then. According to The Hollywood Reporter and its misleading headline, Mike Mitchell is indeed directing a film called Monster Squad for Warner Bros. Like Dekker's film, it too is a supernatural comedy. But unlike Dekker's film, it once boasted the title Nightcrawlers, and was based on a spec by Brian Lynch.

It's reportedly changed plotlines numerous times. Variety notes that it was once centered on an international organization of children who have made it their mission to combat the monsters under the bed. (Familiar!) Michael Arndt rewrote the script to star a neurotic father who must face down childhood monsters. Warner Bros is keeping the current version by Brad Copeland under tight wraps, but it doesn't take much to suppose it deals with "monsters" and a "squad" that deals with them on some level. All teasing aside, this is good news because it means Warner Bros has opted for an original (but undoubtedly reminiscent) idea over their rival Paramount, who was toying with a remake as of last year.

Whenever I see "McG," I imagine what it will be like for the guy years from now. Only having to write out 3 letters for your full name is pretty handy, but will he still prefer to be called that years from now? I imagine this old, brittle 90-something man hobbling around the old folks' home and getting incensed when nurses call him Joseph. Channeling Fisher Stevens in Hackers, I see him saying: "My name is The McG." Anyway, that future is long-off, and right now, the man is smoking. He just signed a 3-year, first-look deal for his Wonderland Sound and Vision banner with Warner Brothers.

Hoping to tap into the success his company has found in television, the McG says: "We want to produce three movies a year. I want to direct one of them every year, and we want to go into a run of extreme productivity with Wonderland-branded pictures. We've had success on the TV front, and we want to match that profile in the film space." First up, potentially in November, is a VR-heavy action comedy called Nightcrawlers -- penned by Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt. The film is about a neurotic dad who must face his childhood tormentor to get over his fear of the dark and the monsters who haunt him. McG describes it as "a buddy comedy where what kids are afraid of turns out to be real, and our guys have to go into these fearscapes and battle all these monsters." Now that is a jump from child models and horny grandpas.

The other film gearing up will be directed by the man himself -- Yucatan. The film is based on a whopping 1,700 or so pages of notes and storyboards made by the late Steve McQueen that were recently found. It's a heist drama set in the Yucatan Peninsula, and WB has picked up Paul Scheuring (Prison Break) to write the script. Why'd he pick this one? As McG* so eloquently says: "Like any suburban pussy, I'm infatuated with Steve McQueen."

*Thanks for spotting that, Stewart! MB