For a while now, James Cameron has been working on producing a new version of the 1966 flick, Fantastic Voyage, about a team of scientists who are miniaturised and injected into the body of a colleague, in order to try and save his life.
While Shane Salerno has been on scripting duties (with Avatar’s Laeta Kalogridis recently hired to polish the screenplay up), there’s been little word on a director since Paul Greengrass signed on and then quickly departed earlier this year. While Tarsem was also briefly attached, Deadline reports that the likes of Darren Aronofsky, Timur Bekmambetov, Jonathan Mostow and Louis Leterrier have all taken meeting about the project recently. Of course Aronofsky is out because he’s now signed up for Wolverine 2, while Bekmambetov has committed for Abraham Lincolm: Vampire Hunter, and out of the rest, Cameron’s first choice is apparently Louis Leterrier.
It’s an intriguing choice, as while Clash Of The Titans was a big success, it wasn’t a particularly well directed movie. However it did have the major spectacle Cameron is apparently after. It’s also true that Cameron has slagged off previous movies by both Leterrier and Mostow, dissing Mostow’s Terminator 3, while saying the Clash Of The Titans 3D conversion was rubbish. Admittedly though he didn’t slag off Leterrier himself, just the way Warner did the 3D without the director’s input.
While no final decision has been made yet, Fox and Cameron and apparently very aware that many of the top directors are now busy filling their schedule. As a result they need to hire a director quickly if they want to shoot Fantastic Voyage next year as planned.
Fantastic Voyage has yet to receive the greenlight, and there are rumours that Fox wants to trim the budget (as usual, Cameron is shooting for the sky with this one, but as he’s not directing, the studio is less keen to give him a virtually unlimited pot og cash), but the technical team behind Avatar is apparently already well prepared, and if things got to plan, it’ll be in cinemas in 2012.