Studio:
Fox 2000.
Production Company:
Blue Tulips Productions.
Project Phase: Development Hell.
Who's In It:
Unknown.
Who's Making It:
Jan De Bont (Director); John Eskow, W.D. Richter, Mark Protosevich (Screenwriters).
Premise: After an spaceship crashes down in the old west, cowboys and indians uses the aliens' technology against each other.
Release Date: Summer 2000 (tentative).
Comments: For a year now, this has been De Bont's proposed follow-up to Speed 2. However, the director has also bought or developed a number of other projects that also caught his attention, such as the asteroid/shuttle space disaster film Galileo's Wake and this project. As of late 1998 it seems GRinS will remain in limbo for even longer as De Bont's next film starts to wind up, that being The Haunting of Hill House. Why, we ask, does this super-terrific sounding idea keep getting delayed? And the first screenwriter on-board was none other than the creator of Buckaroo Banzai and Big Trouble in Little China, W.D. Richter. What's going on here? We demand answers!
Rumors: Unknown.
Scoop Feedback:
[[Scalps submitted by 'Deadpool'.]
April 13, 1998... Daily Variety reports that last week Fox 2000 put a hold on Jan De BontÆs $100 million-plus summer tentpole film Ghost Riders in the Sky. The film originally had been scheduled for a mid-July production start, but Fox execs say the film will get underway sometime in the future.
De Bont has already done location scouting, and pre-production model and design work before the project began to cool off. John Travolta had also been approached for the film's leading man role but declined. [Reported by 'Deadpool'; originally appeared in Variety.]
November 24, 1998... Apparently John Eskow is rewriting the script as we type. Hopefully this will attract the attention of other directors and the project will begin moving forward again.
December 3, 1998... Well, we asked for it. Our deep cover spy 'Wong Fei Hung' returns to whisper in our ears the real reason why this project hasn't advanced much farther than the wet dream catagory of fanboy wishing: apparently the current script sucks so hard it's being sold at vacuum cleaner stores. We haven't had the opportunity to read any drafts of this project but our scooper remained resolute in their opinion. "It's the most contrite boring cliche thing I've read, ever" were the scooper's very own words. We're still shivering. [Merci to 'Wong Fei Hung'.]