While doing the PR rounds to promote his remake of George Romero’s “The Crazies” (in theaters now, by the way) director Breck Eisner also updated fans about his upcoming “Flash Gordon” remake (via Movieline), which he says is still in the scripting stages, and Sony has not yet committed.
Flash Gordon is a project I’ve been pursuing for years, it’s a real passion of mine. The writers have been breaking story the past couple of months, and we have a couple months to go until the draft goes into Sony. Assuming they achieve everything we talked about, I think it will be a really great script. It’s not a remake of any movie that’s been done before. Nothing to do with the camp of the ’80s, nothing to do with the serials of the ’50s. It’s definitely based on the Alex Raymond strips from the ’30s and ’40s, told from the point of view as if he was redoing the strips today. The audience that was reading the strips back then was a very different audience that today’s audience. It’s an action-adventure, very dynamic, aggressive, with a really strong central character.
We’re a long way off. It’s a gigantic movie, so these things are tough to get made. I made Crazies took me years to get made — I can’t imagine a movie of this size. There’s a long way to go. Sony’s got to commit big money to it and love it, and there’s going to be years of prep. It’s a lot of work! But if we can pull it off, I think it would be quite fantastic.
On the bright side, Eisner’s “The Crazies” looks like it will do pretty solid business despite coming in third at the box office over the weekend. Given the film’s relatively small budget, it should turn a profit by the time it hits DVD, which should translate into the studio having more faith that Eisner could actually pull off a “Flash Gordon” movie.
Flash takes it personally when people make fun of his puffy pants.
