Published at: Oct. 10, 1999, 4:44 a.m. CST by staff
Hey folks, Harry here. First off, over at IGN MOVIES they are claiming that Doug Ray Scott is out of the role of Wolverine on the upcoming X-MEN movie. To any that read the Michael Fleming article in Variety last week... this sounded as though it was definitely going to happen. Seems now... it has.
Meanwhile, the whole shooting delays in Australia on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2... well... they are affecting another shooting schedule as well. Many of you may remember that Moriarty has been claiming that MINORITY REPORT was a possibly dead film. Meanwhile, the official line has been that they just chose to push back shooting on the film to sometime at the start of the new year. Well...
While running around up here at the AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL and HEART OF TEXAS WRITER'S CONVENTION, I have run into Scott Frank, screenwriter of OUT OF SIGHT, as well as the upcoming MINORITY REPORT (and Gary Ross' production of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY). Now, Scott, Callie Khouri (screenwriter of THELMA & LOUISE) and I were all talking about the current fear of violence in cinema, the violence tax, MPAA, Culture Committee and other holloween scare stories, when Scott begins to talk to me about the site, and in specific... the whole story about Moriarty's death decree upon the project.
Now... Moriarty's sources... which I am well aware of... were very correct when they talked about mass firings from the design team and film staff, etc. But... what they didn't tell Moriarty was that the lead Production Designer... well, was still onboard working. And that Scott was still working. That FORD (yes, the car company) was in the mist of creating some AMAZING vehicles for this film. Ya see...
In some ways... this is all MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2's fault. The same reason that Doug Ray Scott had to leave X-MEN... well, Tom Cruise was stuck on MI2. Since Tom and Steven are bound as a package to the project, they simply decided to push back the project. A blessing for Scott Frank because he still needed time to finish the script. In fact, just 2 weeks ago, Tom Cruise read the script for the first time. This movie is going to be a radically different future from the ones we have previously seen.
Scott says everything is going ok on the project, he's happy and it will come together. So put aside those fears. He also told me that the script he's written was a page 1 rewrite, using none of the original draft which I and others have read. He then described how this future is the one envisioned by quite a few of today's scientists and futurists. The t-shirted pregnant woman, where the t-shirt has a constant sonogram image of the child. Recently, there have been the articles about chemical computers.... you paint a wall and it then becomes a television screen, or monitor. A very interesting a cool project from the sounds of it. I can not wait to see Spielberg working in this type of universe. Let's hope everything works great for him.
