Hey folks, Harry here with Stephen Norrington, who has an entire slate of cool projects that he's attached to.... Most recently, SHANG CHI, like we told ya yesterday! Well, that story managed to get our man Norrington out of the bushes to give us a rundown on the latest with his projects. I think most interesting is that Norrington is apparently not a fan of Wire-Fu... which seems to mean that his take on Shang Chi would be grounded more in the world of the classic martial arts choreography! Which I also love. His bit about GHOST RIDER and who is handling the concept drawings has my mouth watering.... Bernie Wrightson is a God... and having him work on designing and imagining GHOST RIDER... droooooool.... Now, most people don't know this... IMDB doesn't even list it.... But Norrington has shot and is putting the final touches on a new film since BLADE that has nothing to do with Comic Books at all, called THE LAST MINUTE... He has been handling almost all of the post work himself. And it looks like we might get our first reports on that from this year's Cannes! Ok, well... here's Norrington....
Hey, Harry
Thanks for the name check. Obviously Shang-Chi's aways off in the future, but I love the idea of making a real honest-to-goodness martial arts film, rather than a film that simply has martial arts in it. For my money, martial arts are the most cinematic type of action - particularly the hand-to-hand move-block-move stuff (I'm less keen on all that CTHD wire work).
Ghost Rider update: we're close to finishing a polished draft of the script that I think is really strong - very dark, very thematic. We've gone a little slower than I hoped because I'm STILL finishing up The Last Minute, and David Goyer is directing his debut picture ZigZag as we speak. But the script will be finalised and ready to do the rounds beginning of February, and we already have a preliminary budget that's very workable, and completely in the realms of reason. Oh, and Bernie Wrightson's doing preliminary concept drawings of Ghost Rider as he is conceived in the movie, much more dramatic and impressive than the comic design, with a lot more stages between Johnny Blaze and the full-on burning skull guy.
As far as movie-star casting is going, I can neither confirm nor deny that we are in serious talks with a major star, but I will say that the role has attracted real on-going interest from very appropriate talent, and we're going to continue to pursue those avenues aggressively when we have a script in hand. Was that political enough for you?
Brother Termite: We're planning another major digital effects test soon, to explore the feasibility and financial implications of the on-set shooting techniques we've been developing. And the revised screenplay gets delivered at the end of this month. Any more I'm not at liberty to divulge.
The Last Minute: Jeremy Thomas (Oscar Winning producer of The Last Emperor) has signed to sell this picture at Cannes this year, so we'll be screening it for the first time there - I'm real interested in the reaction it gets, it's very strange, and quite different from the comic book movies I'm currently associated with.
Best,
Norrington
