Prince of Persia could have been a fun movie, which could have easily spun itself a franchise for Disney. Unfortuantely if this report from
IESB is true... I seriously doubt that will now be the case.
Michael Bay is being lined up to direct the movie, which will be called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and has a release date of Summer 2009. Why do people keep going to Bay for these big summer epics? I don't hate the director, he's perfectly fine when shooting
The Rock or
Bad Boys and yes,
Armageddon was perfect material for him but
The Island and
Pearl Harbor? Give me a break, he should never be given the reigns to helm anything but mindless action movies. I just can't seem him doing any justice to a big adventure flick. You need someone with imagination to take the helm for something like this. A
Guillermo del Toro,
Peter Jackson for instance... but obviously they would have been hard to get.
Martin Campbell did some fun stuff with
The Mask of Zorro and he is a far more assured helmer now than he was then... he would have been a fine choice. The choice of
Gore Verbinski would have been too obvious. But Michael Bay, arrrggghhh! We probably should have seen this coming. It's
Jerry Bruckheimer's baby, and the producer likes Bay's style... they worked together on five of Bays' seven movies if you count the upcoming
Transformers. Jordan Mechner, the game's original creator spoke a little on the project...
"Rather than do a straight beat-for-beat adaptation of the new videogame, we're taking some cool elements from the game and using them to craft a new story - much as 'Pirates' did with the theme park ride."
Man, Disney are begging for this to be another
Pirates of the Caribbean franchise for them. Shame, they have fallen down at the first hurdle. source -
iesb