Once a hip, flashy '
Sherlock Holmes' film made half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office last Christmas, a flurry of Hollywood studio's took a closer look at other long out of copyright properties to see if they could get in on the action for themselves. And so it is, the makers of the latest attempt to jump on the pulp hero bandwagon;
"We want to try and do to the story of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" what Guy Ritchie did to 'Sherlock Holmes' ,"
The Hollywood Reporter say
Dominick Fairbanks, the great grandson of the second on screen 'Robin Hood' and famous swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks, is behind a highly ambitious, possibly insane, $120 million tentpole based on Baroness Orczy's classic character '
The Scarlet Pimpernel'. It will be the first film out of his Fairbanks Productions described as the 'newest and big-talking filmmaking banner on the block'. They already have their leading man,
Neil Jackson, a relatively unknown Brit who has turned up in a few t.v. things ('Make it or Break It', 'Flashforward') and was briefly in 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Push'. Yeah we don't know who he is either? Certainly the $120 million isn't being spent on their leading man, but there will be 'high profile cameo's'. A shoot in 'Eastern Europe' is planned for the latter half of next year. Cult writer/director
Michael Armstrong is the head of creative development at the new studio and presumably could direct, though he hasn't helmed a movie in nearly thirty years and certainly nothing to the scale of a $120 million budget. Quite frankly then an unprecedented attempt at muscling in with the big boys. We wish them luck, but we do wonder just where the money is going here considering Warner's 'Sherlock Holmes' was made for less than a $100 million with a bunch of Hollywood stars, who don't come cheap.
Set during the early blood filled days of the French revolution and the violent 'Reign of Terror', the story of 'Scarlet Pimpernel' is that of one of the first masked superheroes, even predating 'The Mask of Zorro' - the more famous adventure hero who was once played by Douglas Fairbanks. Pimpernal was part aristocrat, part avenger who works for the British Government by saving French noblemen who are to be executed, and stealing them for sale exile in Britain. He was last seen via a BBC series starring
Richard E. Grant at the turn of the century.