revenge of the nerds Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Erik Davis ordered me to come up with a new approach to summer movies, and he demanded that the concept be intelligent, engaging, and jam-packed with vowels and consonants. (One out of three isn't bad.) And since I'm a childish movie nerd who had a deep affection for all things nostalgic, my first idea was "Hey, let's have the writers pick their favorite 'movie summer' and write a piece about it." And since my next eleven ideas stunk, he said "Ugh, fine. Do your Favorite Summers thing. But don't forget the vowels."

Nearly all of the Cinematicaleers will be penning their own pieces, but since I like to lead by example (when I'm not leading by guilt), I figured I'd get the ball rolling first. (Special thanks to Box Office Mojo for displaying OLD release dates in very handy fashion.) Also, for the sake of this series, let's say "summer" counts as "May through August," even though May is technically spring and part of September is definitely summer.

5/4 -- The Bounty // Breakin' // Hardbodies // Sixteen Candles -- So which one of these would be the big "Iron Man" release? We got Gibson and Hopkins in a nautical remake; a whole lot of pop-lockin' looneys; a leering sex comedy that helped to kill the sub-genre of mid-'80s sex comedies; and the directorial debut of one John Hughes.

5/11 -- Firestarter // The Natural -- Robert Redford knocking the cover off a baseball and Drew Barrymore immolating George C. Scott. Now THAT's summer!

5/18 -- Finders Keepers // Making the Grade -- A pair of justifiably forgotten farces, yes, both of which I saw theatrically.

5/23 -- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- Even back in 1984 Indiana Jones demanded his very own weekend ... one that starts on a Wednesday, no less! I distinctly remember seeing this on the afternoon of opening day, and while I was waiting for Mom to come pick us up, there was a woman BERATING the box office girl. Honest! Something about the heart-tearing scene had upset her small child. And just like that, the PG-13 was born.

Welcome back to The Write Stuff! I'm thrilled that there is such a strong interest in screenwriting out there. Thank you all so much for your comments last week, both here and on my site. All of your questions and comments will be addressed in the coming weeks, so stay tuned and keep them coming!

The first interview for the column is with red-hot screenwriter Adam F. Goldberg. Adam is living the dream. He writes for both television and film, and his upcoming movie projects include Fanboys, the live-action Jetsons movie, and They Came from Upstairs. Cinematical spoke with the incredibly busy Goldberg about his scripts, his process, and Goonies: The Musical.

Cinematical: You said you were being "enslaved by a director," what are you working on? And should I call the authorities?

Adam F. Goldberg: Perhaps call them for my hacky writing! It's called They Came From Upstairs for Fox. It's a family movie, kinda like Gremlins -- but with aliens. The spec was written by Mark Burton and was sold for like $1.7 mil. I believe I am making about .0001212 of that. It's been a really cool project. The movie was in pre-production and the studio realized the script wasn't ready and shut it down pretty late in the game. I came aboard to get the train back on the tracks which is always high pressure and very difficult to do. I handed in 40 pages and they re-greenlit the movie and we're casting and location scouting now. I'm on draft two currently, working next to the director and bringing his vision into it.

Cinematical: Is that an awkward process at all -- being brought in to re-write a fellow writer? Do you ever run into hurt feelings or bruised egos? I guess the $1.7 million makes the pill easier to swallow.

AFG: Well, I come from the TV world, writing on sitcoms and that's very collaborative. You have to sit in the room and watch 10 other writers tear apart your script right in front of you. That bruises your ego. As for movies, more often than not a writer can only go so far and it's your job to bat clean up. It's never a great feeling to have your screenplay rewritten, but hopefully you've moved onto your next project, so it doesn't sting so much. And believe me, that $1.7 payday is like winning the lottery. I hope I can sell a spec one day. I've had little luck in that department.

Calm down there guys, her career hasn't tanked enough for Anna Faris to begin entertaining the same ideas you were entertaining after reading the title of this post. Nope, instead, Faris will star in an untitled college campus comedy for Columbia Pictures and Happy Madison. And, in the pic, she'll play an ex-Playboy bunny who packs her bags and moves into the lamest sorority house on campus in an attempt to make this group of girl nerds more popular. I imagine it will be something like Ferris Bueller meets Revenge of the Nerds ... except with females. Perhaps we can call it Van Wilder 3: The One Where Anna Faris Shows Up to Deliver One or Two Laughs?

Penned by Legally Blonde (and She's the Man, and Ella Enchanted, and ... do you a spot a theme yet?) scribes Karen McCullah Lutz and Kristen Smith, pic looks to be another female-centric fish-out-of-water comedy and should fit right in alongside Lutz and Smith's other films. Granted, it doesn't appear to be the most mouth-watering concept, but I can see it having potential. Lutz and Smith know how to write entertaining comedy for a mass audience, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit interested in a Revenge of the Nerds-type reversal. Only problem is can they find a group of Hollywood actresses who can play "lame?" We already know there's plenty of dorky guys out there, but there aren't many recent films that feature an abundance of nerd-ish girls. Who would you cast? (Here's where someone will inevitably say, "Well, they already cast their first lame actress -- Anna Faris!")

A few weeks back we brought the word that Fox Atomic's Revenge of the Nerds remake was hitting some seriously rocky scheduling difficulties on location at Atlanta's Emory University. With the project firmly in limbo, we had no idea if the thing was delayed, on hiatus or downright ash-canned, but now it seems that the latter is indeed the case. To those of you who simply couldn't WAIT to get your paws on the Nerds re-do, I offer my apologies: The remake looks to be dead in the water.

According to THR, Emory University booted the production after only two weeks, reportedly because they didn't appreciate the overtly raunchy nature of the production. (Quick question: Had anyone at the college either read the screenplay ... or seen the original Revenge of the Nerds? Was the college expecting a Disney flick?) So the Atomic folks tried to do some shooting at another school (Agnes Scott College), but the facilities simply weren't expansive enough to pass as a big-time party school.

With the holidays approaching, the production on hold, and all involved parties earning a paycheck, Atomic simply decided to stop the bleeding: Case and crew members have been sent home to enjoy Thanksgiving, and it looks like they'll all have a little unexpected free time for the next several weeks before moving on to projects that don't require the approval of any snippy college administrators.

A scooper who goes by the dubious handle "Kentucky Redneck" sent a rather interesting email in to the folks over at Moviehole. Redneck had a good bit to say about the progress on the remake of Revenge of the Nerds (which just recently finished casting); following are the basic thoughts he shared:

• Nerds is now officially on hiatus, and nobody really knows when it will pick up again. After ten days of waiting, everybody involved was sent home.
• Kyle Newman (the director who put together Fanboys) managed to shoot for one whole week before everything stopped. Newman is certainly unhappy, but what can a somewhat rookie director do about it?
• The studio and Newman himself are rather unhappy with the location in Atlanta. Apparently, the executive producer had just finished up another film there and pushed hard for the big A. If Nerds manages to get back on track, expect it to be somewhere else.
• Rumors also suggest director Kyle Newman may be getting sacked. No surprise there -- when a film stoppage occurs rumors like this will always pop up.

Like most geeks, I've got strong hopes for Kyle Newman because of his Fanboys project. Maybe somebody should tell him losing this gig might not be a terrible idea.

More on Nerds remake:

Nerds Geek Up its Cast

More and More Nerds

More on Nerds Remake

Odds and ends from Friday and the weekend:

• If he's going to seek revenge upon the gang that attacked his family, Kevin Bacon will have to go through John Goodman, as the big guy has just signed on to play the boss of a drug ring in Death Sentence. As previously reported, joining Goodman and Bacon will be Kelly Preston and Stuart Lafferty who will be playing Bacon's wife and son.
• Kyle Newman's Revenge of the Nerds remake has been hard at work adding geeks and sorority girls to its ever-expanding cast. Jenna Dewan (Take the Lead), Ryan Pinkston and Nick Zano have become the latest dorks to join the pack. Dewan will play love interest to Max (Christopher Marquette), one of the film's main nerds, while Pinkston will settle into the role of Felch, a 15-year-old college freshman and the pic's token whiz kid. Zano will play lead jock and (we're assuming) the nerds' biggest nemesis.
• New Line has been busy chasing a Snitch ... the screenplay that is. Studio has just picked up Justin Haythe's script, which was inspired by a PBS Frontline documentary. Story revolves around a devoted dad who goes undercover in the drug world to try to find a way to free his son from prison after the boy was sent away on drug charges.

Fox is pumping more money, talent and sequels into their Atomic brand, lining up new pictures The Comebacks and the sequel 28 Weeks Later. Also, their remake of Revenge of the Nerds begins filming in less than a week, so the new brand is chugging along.

However, I'm still not sure exactly why the brand was formed last year, joining other Fox labels Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000. Their focus is genre films for younger audiences that can be produced on modest budgets. Which is Hollywood-speak for "churning out cheap product that the masses will suck up like candy." I checked the glossary. I think that was already synonymous with the Fox brand, or maybe I'm thinking about TV shows like The Simple Life, or perhaps just Bill O'Reilly. Maybe Fox just wanted to sound a bit cooler by injecting the word "atomic" in there. At this point, to insure that younger audiences would watch, they should have just called it Fox MySpace Films.

Heaven help us when MySpace: The Movie hits theaters.

Casting for the upcoming Revenge of the Nerds remake (or re-imagining) is heating up, and we now know who will be playing the main nerds. IESB reports Chris Marquette, Dan Byrd, and Efren Ramirez have signed on as members are the Lamda Lamda Lamda fraternity, with Marquette and Byrd playing the lead roles. They also tell us Kristin Cavallari will be joining Katie Cassidy as Kailey, best friends and sisters in the Pi Delta Pi sorority.

This marks Marquette's second time working with director Kyle Newman, as the two also paired up on Fanboys. He'll be taking on the part of Max Foster, lead nerd. Byrd will play his sidekick, Owen DiMarco (aka "horn dog"), the kind of guy who majors in women's studies. Not surprisingly, Ramirez will portray a foreign exchange student (a la Napoleon Dynamite) named Santiago. In a recent interview with Coming Soon, Ramirez noted his accent will be "quite like Mr. Deeds' John Turturro with the personality of Raul Julia in The Addams Family." Okay, that sounds a bit bizarre ... but I dig it. When asked whether any of the nerds will be based off characters from the original film, Ramirez replied, "They're all new."

So, what do you think about the new cast? Any chances they'll screw it up?

I'm not sure what to think of the upcoming Revenge of the Nerds remake. On one hand, it will be interesting to watch how they update the nerds; throw in things like computers, the internet, iPods and (insert a bunch more neat little gadgets). However, since the original is such a classic, I'm scared I might find myself inside the darkened theater with a clenched fist just dying to burst out and scream things like, "That character was so much funnier in the original!" or "Why didn't this just go direct-to-DVD?"

Nevertheless, a Nerds remake is on the way, and it appears as if we have our first cast member. Variety reports Katie Cassidy (Click, When a Stranger Calls) has signed on to star as Suzy Stone (aka the really hot blonde girl who at first hates the nerds until she falls in love with one), head of the Pi Delta Pi sorority. Now, since director Kyle Newman (Fanboys) has said this will not be a straight remake, there's a small chance her character will differ from the original Pi Delta sorority leader, Betty Childs (as played by Julie Montogmery). Cassidy can next be seen (also playing a sorority girl) in the horror film Black Christmas. (Not for nothing, but I think we should all thank our lucky stars that Paris Hilton did not land this part.)

While I don't have any shiny new movie pics for you today, I do have a few new posters for those of you looking to cover up the beer stains in your dorm room. Check it out:

• Even though the film doesn't have a cast yet, Fox Atomic is wasting no time in promoting its Revenge of the Nerds remake. That's right folks, we officially have a teaser poster. Directed by Kyle Newman (Fanboys), Nerds reunites us with the Lamda Lamda Lamda fraternity as they struggle for acceptance and seek revenge upon those jocks who deserve it the most.
• Hey, guess what -- Sarah Michelle Gellar is returning to make another crappy thriller. Hooray! A new poster for The Return (aka Scott's most anticipated fall flick) has hit the net and, well, why am I not excited. Pic follows a traveling business woman (Gellar) who is drawn to an old farmhouse after having dreamt that a murder took place there 15 years earlier.
• Those of you itching for another fun-filled trip with the Hewitt clan will be happy to know that a brand new poster has been released for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Going the prequel route, pic is said to detail the "beginnings of the Hewitt clan and expose their psychotic idea of family fun." Why do I feel a trip to Disney World is not on their agenda?