christian rivers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In my opinion Halo is to video games what American Idol is to television, and yet both 20th Century Fox and Universal decided a Halo movie (with newbie director Neill Blomkamp directing) just wasn't going to happen. But that was then, and this is now -- with Halo 3 getting set to demolish the gaming world, Peter Jackson told OnFilm magazine that he expects the project to lift itself out of development hell once Fox and Universal catch a glimpse of the Halo hype first hand. As far as Blomkamp goes; Jackson notes: "We wouldn't want to do it with anyone else. It's Neill's call." But that's not all the man has on his plate; apart from directing The Lovely Bones, Jackson is producing a remake of 1954's The Dam Busters; a project he's kept quiet about for quite some time.

Now, however, there's a director (Christian Rivers) and a writer (Stephen Fry) for Dambusters (or is it Dam Busters?), and Jackson said the project is a lot further along than you would think. Apart from saying that some major announcements about the film would be made in the next few months, Jackson said that Weta Digital is already hard at work creating "computer-generated image tests of Lancasters in flight and attacking dams. Not only that, but they're halfway through building a "full-size replica of a Lancaster bomber." Jackson adds, "It's been full on, but we've been keeping under the radar somewhat. It's one of those projects that requires a lot of prep – you can't sprint out of the gate when you've got to figure out how to build a bunch of Lancasters and do vast amounts of research."

Though he stridently denied his interest in a remake just a few months ago, Peter Jackson has a long-standing love for 1954's The Dam Busters, a British film about a real-life secret squadron created to to destroy three crucial German dams during World War II. And, according to an exclusive interview he gave Screen Daily yesterday, Jackson is, in fact, producing that non-existent remake.* He actually inquired about the rights to the film years ago, before work on the The Lord of the Rings series had even begun. At that time he was told the rights were held by Icon, and that Mel Gibson was considering a remake, but they recently became available again, and Jackson snatched them up.

The film -- retitled Dambusters for our slick, streamlined times -- will be directed by long-time Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers, and the pair have already done extensive research for the project, including trips to England to interview the squadron's surviving pilots, and Germany to visit the rebuilt dams. Though Jackson told Screen Daily that he hopes to begin shooting by the middle of next year with a budget between $30 and $40 million, he and Rivers have yet to hire a screenwriter.

*There's no word yet on whether the offensively named dog will make it into the 21st century version or not.