[MovieNews] Yeah, about that whole Stephen King DARK TOWER series thing...

[ApexOversteer]

Looks like Universal has lost the testicular fortitude to make a big movie. A couple of months ago they dumped At The Mountains Of Madness, produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Gillermo del Toro, starring Tom Cruise, and written by H.P. Lovecraft.

What an amazing movie that would have been. But Universal balked at the $150MM budget and canceled the project well into pre-production.

That's alright really, Del Toro hit the ground running and moved right on to Pacific Rim, his giant monster movie.

On the subject of The Dark Tower, I think Ron Howard had actually broken its back, figuring out that three films, bridged by two pay cable TV series was the way to tell this story.

But once again Universal can't get it up. Pre-production staff were sent home yesterday, as the various production executives and Howard discuss budgetary concerns.

Now, it is possible that these concerns will be soothed and the project will go forward, but it isn't likely. Once people get sent home, it is rare that they come back.

What is likely going on is Universal can't justify the risk of spending half a billion dollars over the next 8 to 10 years doing this story justice. Next week they will put the project in "turnaround", where other studios have a chance to pick it up and run with it.

But it almost never works out that way.

Oh well, coulda been cool.

[G8rDMD]

Maybe we could ask Utah to finance the films

[BuckyThreadkiller]

Big movie studios are getting wimpy. The only reason Disney is going OK is because the Avengers ate the whole summer for breakfast. If they hadn't had that, and had to choke down the John Carter fiasco they'd be in deep. As it is JC is barely a blip now.

Even so Disney will probably only make 4 or 5 films this year and Hollywood in total might make 100. Small independents are where the industry is going at a time when people only go to the theater to see spectacle. And even then it has to be spectacle they are familiar with.

Universal's got little and even Paramount isn't swinging for the fences. Wait till Cloud Atlas comes out - Warners is pouring gajillions into that and its going to be a really tough sell.

[RedLS1GTO]

Was just clicking through the new release PPV on the tv over the weekend and realized that there haven't been many good movies at all recently.

It wasn't long ago that I had a list of movies that I wanted to see at any given time. Now, it is rare that I find even 1.