EARTH VS. MOON will be a $200 million epic led by Will Smith?!?!?!
Paul Wenick and Rhett Reese, the guys who wrote the low-on-the radar Zombieland, the $200 million they require to make the admittedly eye catchingly titled Earth vs. Moon into a summer blockbuster reality? Big question mark I'd say, even with a title as provocative and fun (can you imagine the amazing poster campaign?) because unless you are Christopher Nolan or James Cameron... $200 million is extremely hard to come by if you haven't got a movie based on an popular and proven geek fanbase as a basis. It just doesn't happen. Well that is unless it can be a starring vehicle for Will Smith. AH! That's a BINGO, as my favourite line in Inglourious Basterds goes! Reese and Wenick have named the lead character in Earth vs. Moon after Smith, hoping to attract his attention, likely the only star who can make this movie a reality. A movie they describe to First Showing as...
"hardcore, 300-style movie with some comic relief to it, but about the Earth and a colony on the moon essentially in a civil war."The movie will be set 300 or 400 years in the future and will only work if Universal can coff up $200 million, because the ambition to create a war picture unlike any other is so large in scope. And Will Smith is a proven blockbuster returner, so Universal would need that wager I feel to make this project on that kind of size. FINALLY then some details then about the Universal movie picked up in April 2008 for a six figure sum after a four way studio war, and whose plot details have been secretly kept under-wraps up until now. Apparently it's going through a slight new re-draft but they hope to seriously hunt down an actor and director soon...
"It's about two societies at war, but it's also about a family, not at war, but a fractured family. Half of them have gone to the moon and the other half are still on Earth and so they are on opposite sides of this conflict and we wanted to make sure that as big of movie as it's going to be, it works on a small level. It works on a personal level, the way we like to think about Zombieland working. It's just this huge post-apocalyptic landscape, but we really want it to work on an interpersonal level for just a few people who are the stars."Wenick and Reese got the idea from a Stephen Hawking TED Speech from a few years back and originally thought it would make an awesome video game, before going the slightly more ambitious route of a film adaptation....
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