Alright, looks like the project that Emmerich and Devlin bought back is called ISOBAR. I seem to remember Dean mentioning this project during an interview a few years back. One thing to consider on the below scoop. This is an OLD DRAFT this spy is referring to. Several years old. Undoubtedly there is a lot of work to do before this project is at your local screens. So here is the scoop as Birdie Num Num let's it slip and slide...
I'm writing to you about your story about the Centropolis slate. If Devlin and Emmerich have indeed bought back a the rights to a project they had at Carolco, then that project is a script called "Isobar". Frankly, it would probably be better if this script never sees the light of day. This was a project in development for a long time. It was originally written by Steven De Souza of "Die Hard 2" and (unfortunately) "Streetfighter" fame and had Stallone attached at one point. I think Renny Harlin was once attached to it to. The story is basically a disaster type set-up, involving the passengers on an underground semi-conducter super bullet train (ISOBAR is some sort of anacronym for the train) that gets attacked by weird creatures. It was written before the disaster boom, but would now probably seem old-hat. Think "Deep Rising" with a different locale and bigger budget.
The interesting thing about "Isobar" is that it's one of the first things Devlin and Emmerich wrote together. As you probably heard, the two met when Devlin was an actor on "Moon 51" (I think that's the title -- I could have the number wrong). This movie turns up on cable often and stars Michael Pare. Emmerich got "Universal Soldier" on the basis of this, brought Devlin in and then the two got attached to rewrite "Isobar". I've never read Devlin's draft, so maybe they made it super cool, but I did read the DeSouza draft about 6-7 years ago and remember it being a stinker. I have faith in our boys, but just hope this isn't a case of being anal retentive and feeling the need to cash in and unload every possible project that's in their foot-locker out of sentimental reasons. I'd much rather see them move forward after "Godzilla".
In other Centropolis news, I have it on good authority that Emmerich has effectively taken over the direction of "The Thirteenth Floor," a relatively low-budget thriller Centropolis is currently shooting in L.A. The ostensible director is an old crony of Roland's, a German TV commercial director who did some second-unit stuff on "Godzilla," but a very reliable source who's working on the crew tells me that Roland hates his footage and has stepped in and is calling all the shots. Could be cool.
