Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I think Harry's speechless over this. He first brought up the Variety story announcing a TOM SWIFT film in the works, gave me a little shit for not really knowing anything about the classic series of kids books, then read the Variety article and started uttering half-sentences about how much they're fucking it up.
From what I gather, Tom Swift pre-dates The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and was about a teenage boy (originally in WW1 era) inventor who lives with his widowed father and goes on all sorts of adventures full of mystery and sci-fi-ish inventions. The books started in 1910 and it seems each generation got a new series.
Now Worldwide Biggies, a start-up digital studio run by Albie Hecht (of Nickelodeon's THE NAKED BROTHERS BAND and JIMMY NEUTRON fame), got the rights. At first Hecht says the right things... he grew up reading the books, he's a fan and wants to see them realized... Then he goes on to say that Tom Swift will be updated to present day and instead of rad half science fiction and half science fact inventions, we're going to get "Green technology." Really?
They're not sure how they're going to go about it... going from possibly live action with tons of CGI to all performance capture... If they keep on this track, then they're just going to be the lame TINTIN knockoff... you know, the adventuring youth adapted faithfully (in period) by Spielberg and Jackson or the NANCY DREW-esque txting and iChatting upgrade version... Which one sounds cooler to you?
Here's hoping Mr. Hecht realizes why he fell in love with the series in the first place and rethinks his stance. If he's going to do performance capture is there really any need to set this modern?
But I'm talking out of my ass. I don't know how good the series got in the '50s, then the '80s, but I do know that as a movie-goer what I want to see is high period adventure, not another SPY KIDS feeling clone. Yikes...
