Edward Zwick To Tell The Origins Of THE GREAT WALL Of China!
The Last Samurai director returns to Asia for a historical epic about the origins of the largest wonder of the world!
Edward Zwick is one of those rare Hollywood directors whose best work is consistently derived from foreign-based big budget tales. Just think for a second of his great films - The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond - two top-rate motion pictures and then consider his last movie - the U.S. set romance drama Love & Other Drugs, perhaps a contender for the most annoyingly bland movie of 2010 whose biggest sin was making you bored of seeing Anne Hathaway naked! Still baffling to us how he managed that. Zwick clearly took the easy money with that one and we hope he redeems himself with something appropriately epic soon. Could this be it... Deadline say the veteran helmer has agreed a deal to co-write and direct a movie about The Great Wall of China, Asia's biggest landmark that has stood for over 2,000 years. The movie would be about the mystery behind it's construction which will probably include several large scale battles and a romance or two. Zwick will co-write the script with his regular writing partner Marshall Herskovitz. The idea behind the movie titled 'The Great Wall' came from Legendary's Thomas Tull and World War Z author Max Brooks, the former who has seen a business opportunity to move into the economically thriving Far East market and is working with Asian partners on a new standalone company he formed named Legendary East, a new studio home based in Hong Kong. Several productions aimed towards a Chinese audience but with a keen eye on a wider global appeal will be produced and obviously the first business idea they've had is a movie about the country's biggest tourist destination! So Zwick is very much adept at grand scale, historical epics and even his first film in the 80's, Glory (about the U.S. civil war) showed his natural ability to tell these kind of stories on the big screen. Sure... this movie is blatantly obvious for it's business intent but if they let Zwick loose with the story, then maybe an origin movie about The Great Wall of China will be truly something to see.... Legendary is of course the shingle behind The Dark Knight and the forthcoming Man of Steel and producer Charles Roven will be working on this picture that is likely to be distributed by Warner Bros across the world. The intent is to move fast on this one and it's expected to be Zwick's next film, replacing CBS' attempted launch of a series of films based on Vince Flynns C.I.A. agent/terrorist hunter Mitch Rapp beginning with an adaptation of last years published story American Assassin that Zwick attached himself to earlier in the summer.