War
of the Worlds
(2005)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Justin Chatwin, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Tim
Robbins
Director: Steven Spielberg
Opening Date: June 29, 2005
Want to see a movie based on a late-19th century novel
starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg? Well, someone is
bargaining that you’d desperately want to see it because they’re willing
to invest millions into making it.
Yup, the novel is H.G. Wells’ well-known
War of the Worlds about Martians invading Earth,
which was made most notably into a
1950s movie as well as a TV series. Despite Paramount (a huge
Hollywood company) betting on you wanting to see this movie, Pendragon
Pictures (a not-so huge company) is also pretty sure of the material’s
audience pulling power since it also has a movie version of the
novel lined up for release next year, this time starring a cast of
unknowns and made for a paltry (well, in comparison, that is) $10 to $20
million.
The Pendragon production apparently follows the Wells
novel to the letter, sticking to the original novel’s Victorian England
setting (none of the other filmed adaptations ever went this route). The
Cruise/Spielberg version will be “updated” to a “modern setting” and takes
all kinds of other liberties with the source material, courtesy of a
screenplay by Jurassic Park scribe, David
Koepp. (So, Cruise and Spielberg are remaking
Independence Day then?)
But
why this sudden interest in War of the Worlds?
Paramount is so confident about this movie that it is slated for a
Wednesday, June 29 release next year which will bring it in direct
competition with the big screen Fantastic
Four movie also currently being filmed. (*Note: Since the time
of writing, the Fantastic Four movie's release date has been moved
to 8 July which won't bring the two movies into such direct competition
with each other.)
The fourth of July holiday weekend has been a lucrative
one for studios (Men In Black and, uhm,
Independence Day for example), but are they serious about War of
the Worlds generating enough bucks to make back this sort of
megabudget? (Especially when one considers that the previous
Cruise/Spielberg project Minority Report,
while being a decent enough movie, underperformed at the box office.)
After all, you can practically pay off some poor, miserable Third World
country’s debt with that kind of money!
Anyway, one can only hope that War of the Worlds
is better than the previous H.G. Wells movie, namely the lousy
The Time Machine, which was also (gulp!)
produced by DreamWorks (a co-producer) . . .
Note: Don’t expect to see the Pendragon version on the
big screen though, but rather it hitting the video shelves right before
the release of the Tom Cruise movie. (OK, it hasn’t been confirmed yet,
but that’s what I’d do.)
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