Thursday, October 20, 2005

Eisner to Helm 'Lagoon' Redo for Universal

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Creature From the Black Lagoon" will surface again, this time with Breck Eisner at the helm for Universal Pictures. Part of Universal's rich legacy of black-and-white monster movies, the original "Lagoon" followed a scientific expedition searching for fossils in the Amazon that discovers a prehistoric creature able to breathe underwater. The creature, named Gill-Man, terrorizes the group and falls in love with the fiance of a member of the expedition. The studio began developing updates of its creature features after the success of 1999's "The Mummy." Gary Ross, whose father, Arthur Ross, was a writer on the 1954 original, is producing the remake via his Larger Than Life banner. Ross – writer-director of "Seabiscuit" and "Pleasantville" – wrote the current draft of the "Creature" screenplay. Eisner, son of longtime Disney CEO Michael Eisner, met Ross at a dinner party. After some conversations, Ross sent Eisner the script to "Lagoon," and he wanted in. "I've always been a fan of the original, but for this I would love to just update and modernize the film," Eisner said in an interview. "We see it as an aggressive sci-fi horror film in the vein of 'Alien' or like John Carpenter's 'The Thing.' We want to elevate the source material." The studio will use a combination of CGI and practical effects for the monster. Design of the creature is under way.

No comments: