I truly thought we had lost
Robert Zemeckis to the unfulfilling medium of performance capture technology forever. Veteran film-makers, once they find technology that excites them and they derive much pleasure from, rarely let it go. See Michael Mann and shooting on hand-held digital for an example of that. So it took be my pleasant surprise to read that
Zemeckis had attached himself to not only his first live action feature film since the brilliant 'Cast Away' a decade ago, but also his first in the time travel genre since the 'Back to the Future' trilogy culminated with part three two decades ago. Titled '
Timeless', the pitch is seen as a big tent pole release at Warner Bros, who bought
Mike Thompson's screenplay for a handsome six figure sum. Zemeckis is potentially attached to direct, and will produce via his ImageMovers shingle. If Thompson's name is familiar to you guys it's because he famously wrote
'Steinbeck's Point of View', a very big pay day for Thompson and his then co-screenwriter
Brandon Camp when it was picked up by Warners in a huge deal. The project caught the interest of Tom Cruise who briefly circled, and Warners followed up with a pay or play deal, which resulted in a multi-million pay-out deal when the film went unrealised. More recently Thompson and Camp, both very rich man without the passion they might have once had, wrote the instantly forgettable rom-com '
Love Happens' and that dreadful Kevin Costner movie '
Dragon Fly'. Though they have since split from writing movies together and 'Timeless' is solely written by Thompson.
We've been clamouring for Zemeckis to return to live-action film-making, and we're always game for a good time travel tentpole, especially with the track record this guy has with the genre. So we are in for this. Whether this ends up being his next movie is up in the air. We previously expected him to make his fourth animated/performance capture movie with 'Yellow Submarine', a movie based on the Beatles record but his attachment to this might have changed matters. He's also apparantely interested in helming Chris Nolan's '
Superman: The Man of Steel', which ten years ago would have got me a hell of a lot more excited than it does today.