Nicole Kidman, Jason Staham. Two INDY-style projects?
Two entirely different projects are making the news rounds today, both similar in that they are INDIANA JONES style-movies. First, The Hollywood Reporter say that Nicole Kidman has been tapped up to star in THE FOURTH KINGDOM, an action/adventure archaeological discovery movie from Simon Kingberg who last writing credit was on the global spanding JUMPER. The movie is intented to do for "treasure hunt movies" what the Bourne films did to Bond... i.e. a more intelligent, very character driven and less cliche movie in the genre. The other movie then is a project that Jason Statham mentioned to Empire, where a project called THE GRABBERS is being set up as an unofficial remake of the classic Humphrey Bogart and John Huston 1948 movie THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE...
Weve got a movie were trying to do, written by David and Janet Peoples, in the vein of an old film, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre... Its not a remake or anything, clarified The Stath. But its a little bit like that about relationships and how greed contaminates the relationships these three people have. The working title is The Grabbers.David Peoples is one of the co-adapters on BLADE RUNNER and wrote Clint Eastwood's epic UNFORGIVEN. The plan is to film the movie before the end of the year if they can get sufficient financing together. Now whats SIERRA MADRE got to do with INDY JONES? Well they are both treasure movies and more than anything else, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took more from that movie and Humphrey Bogart's performance than anything else in cinema/literature history for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
Statham has already starred in remakes to THE ITALIAN JOB and DEATH RACE. I'm thankful they are doing a movie "in the vein of" and not remaking an absolute classic.