Nine Lives Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Having just 'wrapped up' Pirates of the Caribbean (Is it really the end, or will we be inundated with extra sequels?), Jerry Bruckheimer has lined up his next action flick. This time, it's free of the roaring "Yarr!" of swashbucklers, and instead, will deal with a sea of bullets. Variety has reported that Walt Disney Co. has picked up Jonathan Hensleigh's action pitch, Nine Lives, for him to pen and Bruckheimer to produce. Hensleigh has a few directorial stints under his belt, including The Punisher, but he is most known for his screenwriting -- he's the pen behind Die Hard: With a Vengeance and Jumanji.

That's not all. Hensleigh has a long history with Bruckheimer -- he was an executive producer on Con Air, Armageddon, and Gone in Sixty Seconds, he wrote Armageddon along with J. J. Abrams, and he also rewrote the script for The Rock, although he was never officially credited. Considering the success of these films, I'd be very surprised if this drama, about a Manhattan detective called 'Nine Lives' who survives a slew of shootings while on duty, doesn't pack a punch at the box office and rake in the cash. He had originally sold the project to Disney years ago, when he was interviewing for a writing job with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but this deal, at $1.75 million, is just a bit sweeter. I wonder if other writers out there will start dusting off their old, forgotten scripts?

Last week I talked a little about "per-screen averages," and how they reveal the films that people really want to see, rather than the artificially inflated numbers created by films showing on 4000 screens. Most of the responses I received were from people who claimed that, even if films like Brick or Friends with Money showed on an equal number of screens, they would not perform as well as "dumbed-down" fare like Ice Age: The Meltdown or Silent Hill.

Though we're only talking about guesses, and there is no proof, I would argue that, if Brick and Friends with Money were playing on 4000 screens, with all the accompanying advertising and hype, they would do just as well -- if not better -- than the corresponding stupid films. Why? For the same reason: if Brick came in at number one on the box office list due to playing on a high quantity of screens, with plenty of promotion, then it would trigger the same response in people: "I heard Brick was really good." Only in this case, Brick actually is really good, and it might actually stick around for a while. My evidence? A little movie called ... 

I am generally suspicious of "star-studded" casts; that five, ten, or even twenty actors would all agree to participate in an independent film speaks not so much to the quality of the project but the current vogue of Hollywood actors wanting to create for themselves "indie" cred. And TV cred. And stage cred. So on and so forth like little Mexican jumping beans they go, from one acting platform to the next, building the versatile resume of an A-grade 21st century star. But perhaps the star-studded cast is less for resume building and more for rubbing elbows between the established and the new, the young and the old, the Hollywood icon and the crossover hit. Or maybe everyone's just feeling sentimental.

Some combination of the above theories might explain the strange amalgamation that is Nine Lives, with tearjerker experts Glenn Close, Kathy Baker, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Holly Hunter, Robin Wright Penn, Amy Brennerman, and Dakota Fanning reading dutifully from a script that seems to have been drafted during an Oprah post-show party.

Given the success of 2003's Taken (not only was the series popular with audiences, but it also won the Emmy for outstanding miniseries), it's not exactly a surprise that Steven Spielberg and The Sci-Fi Channel have found another project on which to collaborate. This year's offering is a 12-episode miniseries called Nine Lives, and it sounds extremely disturbing. In the series, grieving people who have lost loved ones apparently pursue "near-death experiences" in a quest to be reunited with the dead, if only briefly. (And I just got chills typing that.) Wow, is that a creepy idea.

Spielberg will serve as executive producer, alongside series writer Les Bohem, who also penned Taken. No information is available yet on when the series will air, but since it's only just begun production, we probably shouldn't expect it to show up before the summer.