Chris Weitz has one of the biggest hyped movies of this year coming out in December, the fantasy epic
The Golden Compass. The movie will be Weitz's first as a solo director as he has worked with his brother
Paul on his previous films
American Pie,
Down to Earth and
About a Boy.
Empire Online report that Chris will re-team with Paul for a different fantasy series but there is no word of them directing, just producing at this point. This series in question is the
Elric saga which was first printed in 1961 and has somehow gone all these years untouched by the movie industry. Empire Online tell us much more...
Elric of Melniboné, aka Elric Kinslayer, aka The White Wolf first appeared in print in 1961, and is the anti-hero of more than a dozen books. A physically weak, perpetually sickly albino whos the outcast Emperor of a race of cruel, ancient decadent people, hes no musclebound Conan-type, instead drawing his power from the spirit-sucking runesword Stormbringer, an evil entity with whom he struggles for his own soul. And hes frankly one of the greatest fantasy characters out there albeit one whos going to be fiendishly hard to make work on screen.
Recent history shows that you are not guaranteed success if you add dragons, swords and young kids going on fantastic journeys into other worlds. You need to have something special about your fantasy flick and movies like
Eragon and
Narnia just didn't have it. While I'm here, a quick rant about The Golden Compass... I have a huge problem with the way that movie is being promoted. New Line are pushing the marketing in our faces that "This is the new Lord of the Rings" and they even so much as suggest that this new series is a sequel or a continuation of
Peter Jackson's franchise. The trailer for the movie SHOULD DEFINTELY NOT have the "one ring" at the beginning. The Lord of the Rings has nothing to do with your film and any comparisons is insulting to the audience and will probably do your film some harm in the long run. source -
coming soon