THIS piece at Deadline says that Fox has set Shawn Levy (the two NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM films, DATE NIGHT, the forthcoming REAL STEEL) to direct their 3D remake of Richard Fleischer's FANTASTIC VOYAGE (available HERE).
Many directors (like Jonathan Mostow and Paul Greengrass) have circled the CGI-intensive project over the last few years. Levy's involvement seems a surprising choice at first glance, but makes a bit of sense given his existing experience with effects heavy projects, and that he's actively moving away from "comedy" fare with projects like REAL STEEL.
The original adventure starred Stephen Boyd, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, the ultra-smokin' Raquel Welch ...
...and looked something like this:
The picture was also the impetus for this 1968 cartoon...
Interestingly, Isaac Asimov authored the novelization of the original film, which is available HERE.
Nordling submitted the same story at the same time. Here are his thoughts as well...
Nordling here.
Shawn Levy at first glance doesn't have the track record that would indicate that he could handle a remake like FANTASTIC VOYAGE, although he has REAL STEEL coming later this spring. That film seems to indicate that Levy wants to break out from the family comedies he's best known for like NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN. But when he has James Cameron backing him up as a producer, as reported by Deadline, someone somewhere has the confidence that he can pull it off.
FANTASTIC VOYAGE, a remake of the 1966 film of the same name, has a group of scientists being shrunk to go inside a human body to fight... what, disease? Breast implants? A heroin-filled drug mule balloon? to save a friend's life. It's going to be shot in 3D (with Cameron's involvement, did you expect otherwise?) and the script is by Shane Salerno, who's own track record isn't exactly Pulitzer caliber either (an ALIENS VS. PREDATOR film on one's resume doesn't exactly fill me up with confidence). Still, as you've gathered by my posts already, I'm the eternal optimist, so we might see magic happen here.
Apprarently some heavy hitters like Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass were involoved with the project before Levy was signed on. I'd especially be curious on Greengrass's take on the material - how political would a film going inside the human body be? Maybe he would have shown the damage that high fructose corn syrup does to our inner workings. And Aronofsky's would have been gloriously strange, I'd imagine. But for now, we have Shawn Levy, and we'll see how the film plays out. No cast reported as yet.
