July 8th Roundup and Comic Con

Thankful to be back from LA. 

T’wasa good trip. Positive for career and good to spend time with friends I see all too rarely.  I showed Kane to a few more studio execs – most of them loved or really liked and all at least admired the film.  (No, I tell a lie; one exec simply didn’t like it at all but I’d feel weird if everyone loved it. Art is supposed to be at least a little devisive.)    These men and women were production execs and nothing to do with distribution so their passion for the film sadly has no bearing on getting the film into theatres.   All I’m hearing is that this is the hardest market there has ever been for selling and distributing a movie.  Every studio is making cutbacks, jobs are going, budgets are being slashed, production slates contracting and the independents are mostly in a terrible panic.  It’s nasty out there.

But regardless of this, there is as great an appetite for movies from the audience as there has ever been so I was meeting with studios, independents and producers to talkabout other projects and new ideas with them.  Now that we all know Nimrod Antal has got the Predators job – gutting but as someone told me “thems is the breaks” – I need to decided what I’m doing next.  The Wes Craven thing might work out but in these difficult times you’ve got to spread-bet just a little.   So I’m not just talking about my own stuff but also reading other scripts and books that are currently circulating to try and find something that I’m passionate enough about to spend two years of my life working on.    There are one or two very interesting challenges but nothing that leaps out at me from the huge reading pile next to my bed.  A few books are available that I’d love to adapt, so I’m taking meetings on these and I’m trying to secure the rights to a couple of graphic novels I’ve loved since I was young. 

Casting for The Unblinking Eye is moving forwards slowly – hoping to be able to announce something soon or at least before I go grey and die of old age.  And I have another dark little ghost story which is gathering steam under the careful eye of a smart young producer. It’s called ‘The Memory of Stone’  and has a Devil’s Backbone/The Others kind of vibe about it.   It’s such a hard ‘market’ to get anything made right now but the script is smart, character driven and very creepy so I’m hoping to get a good cast attached and find a way to bring it in at a sensible price.  Hopefully something will come of this as I’d love to make what I’d call a classic European ghost story.  Of course, I’m still chasing after a few of the extremely cool comic book movies and blockbusters which are always grinding towards the summer weekends but that’s a tough world to crack.  Kane is swinging those studio doors wide open and having been on the short list for something high profile helps enormously too.  But it is the oddest time to be in this business; anything can happen.

Also, and this is super cool, Solomon Kane is going to Comic-Con.  It’s not finally, finalised but I think the hunky Mr Purefoy and myself will show a few little clips and maybe the trailer (if the damn thing is finished) around midday on Saturday 25th.   Details still a little up in the air but I can’t wait to go.  Stay tuned.

~ by michaeljbassett on July 8, 2009.