Can Universal find a 'Bourne' replacement for Paul Greengrass?

"BOURNE" UPDATE: Paul Greengrass has just released a statement about his departure from the "Bourne" franchise. If only everyone in Hollywood sounded so classy. He says:

 "You won't find a more devoted supporter of the Bourne franchise than me. I will always be grateful to have been the caretaker to Jason Bourne over the course of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. I'm very proud of those films and feel they express everything I most passionately believe about the possibility of making quality movies in the mainstream. My decision to not return a third time as director is simply about feeling the call for a different challenge. There's been no disagreement with Universal Pictures. The opportunity to work with the Bourne family again is a difficult thing to pass up, but we have discussed this together and they have been incredibly understanding and supportive. I've been lucky enough to have made four films for Universal, and our relationship continues. Jason Bourne existed before me and will continue, and I hope to remain involved in some capacity as the series moves on."

The news that Paul Greengrass is reportedly dropping out of the fourth installment in Universal's wildly successful "Bourne Identity" franchise is really bad news for Universal. In the midst of a prolonged commercial slump, with several problematic films (notably "The Wolfman" and Greengrass' own "The Green Zone") still clogging up the studio pipeline, the studio had been putting all of its focus on pushing ahead with sequels to its most valuable movie brands, in particular "Bourne," "The Fast and the Furious" and "Wanted."

It's a sign of Universal's desperation to jump-start its commercial projects that Greengrass' exit seems to have involved scheduling issues -- i.e., that Universal wanted the film in production far sooner than Greengrass did.

Greengrass' departure puts the "Bourne" series in jeopardy, since it's unlikely that Matt Damon, the star of the franchise, would commit to doing a fourth film unless the studio came up with a great script and a top director. (The most fascinating detail in The Wrap's account of Greengrass' departure is the news that Universal had two different screenwriters simultaneously at work on competing scripts for the project.)

Like most movie stars, Damon is happy to take a big-sequel payday, but only if he gets to work with a filmmaker who would bring some A-list cool to the proceedings.

So who could the studio recruit as a replacement filmmaker? I always like to be helpful, so I've prepared a quick list of possible directors who could offer some added value to another "Bourne" film. If any of you have other suggestions, please feel free to share:

Michael Mann: No one has a better feel for kinetic political thrillers. Sure, he's a handful, but Mann is an actor magnet and if Universal could survive two consecutive Mann adventures ("Miami Vice" and "Public Enemies"), maybe a third one would be the charm.

Tony Scott: He's always busy, so scheduling could be an issue, but as one of the best shooters in the business, he'd be a perfect fit for "Bourne." Another magnet for movie stars.

Neill Blomkamp: After the surprise success of "District 9," he's on everyone's "Hot Director" list. He's young, full of visual energy and would be a drawing card for Damon as a way to bring new energy to an aging film series.

Pierre Morel: He doesn't have the cachet of some of the other candidates, but after having a huge hit with the low-budget "Taken," he'd be the go-to guy for Universal if the studio wanted to rein in "Bourne" production costs this time around.

Len Wiseman: A bona fide action hit-maker after "Underworld" and "Live Free or Die Hard," he would also bring low-cost commercial chops to the series, though he might not have enough of the cool factor to pass muster with Damon.

John Moore: Something of an in-house director at Fox, he's delivered a series of solid but unspectacular actioners ("Behind Enemy Lines," "Max Payne"). He might not be enough of a drawing card to impress Damon, but on the other hand, you know that if he can work with Tom Rothman, he can work with anybody.

Timur Bekmambetov: He'd be the perfect choice, being a great visual stylist with tons of action credibility. Unfortunately, Universal already has him at work on a much-needed sequel for his hit, "Wanted."

Zack Snyder: "300" made him an instant star, but after the visual mess of "Watchmen," he might be willing to crank out a great genre sequel if it gave him the chance to work with a top movie star.

Steven Soderbergh: He keeps making crazy, inaccessible personal films, but if the studio needs to keep Damon on board, who would be better than the director who worked so well with the star on both "The Informant!" and the "Ocean's" series?

Doug Liman: He is, after all, the guy who launched the franchise, directing and producing "Bourne Identity." Sure, there were the well-reported contretemps between director and studio, but few know  "Bourne" better than Liman, who has received a producer credit on the last two movies.

Photo of Matt Damon in "The Bourne Ultimatum" by Jason Boland / Universal; Paul Greengrass by Francois Mori / Associated Press

'The Twilight Saga' puts Summit in the mega-frachise business

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" has been exploding all sorts of box office records -- my colleague, Ben Fritz, says, for example, that it is the least expensive movie ever to open to more than $200 million worldwide. But the most important record that it's on track to break is one that might give a serious new shot in the arm to everyone in the indie film world.

When you factor in the original film's $383.8 million in worldwide grosses with the $700 million or more in worldwide grosses that "New Moon" could eventually roll up, Summit Entertainment will soon find itself having the biggest true independent film franchise in recent history. (By true independent, I'm disqualifying New Line, which made even more money with its "Lord of the Rings" franchise but wasn't a true independent since it was already owned by Time-Warner by the time the "LOTR" series was launched.) 

Summit's runaway success with "Twilight" is a very big deal, since -- like 'em or not -- franchises provide the building blocks for the modern movie business. With them, a studio has the money in the bank (as well as the blockbuster in the can) to help survive a lean year or a couple of costly flops. You never see any of the top execs at Warners crawling out on a high ledge, preparing to jump when the studio is pulverized by a disaster like "Poseidon" or "Speed Racer" or "Body of Lies." That's because Warners always has another "Harry Potter" or "Batman" saga sitting on the pad, preparing to launch into the box-office stratosphere. Ditto for Sony with "Spider-Man," Paramount with "Star Trek" or Disney with "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Indie studios have rarely, if ever, had the cushion of such a cozy franchise piggy bank. So when an indie studio has a bad year, it's really a bad year. The high ledge can look awfully tempting. It's why in the Miramax days, the Weinstein brothers created the genre-based Dimension division, which gave Bob Weinstein the opportunity to develop such cash cows as the "Scary Movie" franchise, the "Scream" series and the "Spy Kids" saga. Ditto for Lionsgate with its long-running "Saw" horror showcase. However, even though the six "Saw" movies have racked up an impressive $711.8 million in worldwide grosses, it's likely that Summit, with just the first two installments in its "Twilight" series, will end up leaving "Saw" in its wake. Likewise with Dimension's "Scary Movie" series, which has made $672 million around the globe.

It doesn't mean that Summit's future is secure. The studio eventually will have to prove that it's more than a one-trick pony. But for now, Summit has some pretty serious bragging rights, proving that being an indie studio no longer means you have to be a second-class power, even when it comes to playing with the big boys in the franchise game.

'The Blind Side's' John Lee Hancock escapes from movie jail

John Lee Hancock thought he was doing a great job of racing through a day of shooting earlier this year on "The Blind Side," the new film that stars Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a no-nonsense Memphis supermom who makes room in her life for Michael Oher, a homeless, 350-pound African American teenager who ended up becoming the Baltimore Ravens' first-round pick in this year's NFL draft.

But when the real Leigh Anne showed up to visit the set, she found her patience flagging after a few hours. "If I were in charge," she told Hancock, "we'd get things done a lot faster around here."

I can only imagine what the hyper-energetic Tuohy would do if she were ever forced to sit through a studio development meeting, but I'm guessing that after a little while she'd be tossing people out of windows. She certainly would have been wondering what took Hancock so long to get back behind the camera. After all, Hancock is a supremely talented writer-director who made an impressive directorial debut in 2002 with "The Rookie" after writing a pair of Clint Eastwood-directed films, including "A Perfect World." And as it turns out, "The Blind Side" is a surprise fall hit, making an estimated $34.5 million this weekend, and according to CinemaScore, earning a rare A-plus from moviegoers, a reliable signal that the movie will have a long and profitable life in the multiplexes. 

So why hadn't Hancock made a movie since his second feature, "The Alamo," arrived way back in 2004?

If you ask most people in Hollywood, they'd tell you that Hancock was in movie jail. A costly flop that ended up getting awful reviews and becoming the media's poster film for misguided Hollywood excess, "The Alamo" was an especially painful experience for Hancock. Born and raised in Texas, he was a natural choice to salvage the film after its original director, Ron Howard, bowed out of the production over a variety of budget-related issues. But after a series of dire early screenings, Hancock was forced to make huge cuts in what was originally a nearly three-hour film, sacrificing a lot of depth and rich historical texture along the way.

When we sat down to talk about his new film recently, Hancock still couldn't suppress a cringe when the subject of "The Alamo" came up. When you have a flop in Hollywood, it hurts, even years later. Of course, if you're a superstar filmmaker, whether you're Steven Spielberg or Michael Mann or Michael Bay, you can have a flop -- even a couple of stinkers -- and still get back into the ring, bloodied but unbowed. Even though Mann had belly-flopped with a "Miami Vice" remake, he bounced right back, even getting the same studio -- Universal -- who'd bankrolled his dud to put up the dough for his next film, "Public Enemies," apparently having decided that if a movie star of Johnny Depp's status still wanted to work with Mann that the director must still have the right stuff.

But directors with less invincible reputations have suffered. Greg Mottola, for example, was considered a promising young filmmaker after making the well-reviewed 1996 film "The Daytrippers." But when he finally got another movie going, "Duplex," he ended up taking the fall for a host of nasty creative disputes and was fired off the picture (which ended up being a flop, directed by Danny DeVito). To get back behind the camera, Mottola went to work in TV, directing episodes of "Arrested Development" and other TV series. He re-emerged in 2007, thanks to support from Judd Apatow, when he directed Apatow's comedy hit "Superbad," which made him bankable again.

Of course, if you ask Hancock, he'll tell you that he has some powder burns from "The Alamo" experience. "I'd love the opportunity to do a director's cut of the film, because what people saw in the theaters, even though I'm proud of it, wasn't the fully realized version of the movie. I learned that you should never take on a project where the media has decided that they already have an opinion about it. We were dogged by the same negative press that was directed at the movie before I'd even signed on to write it. The movie had just become a target, even though most of that negativity was directed at [then Disney chief] Michael Eisner." 

But Hancock insists that he never felt like he was languishing in a movie jail cell. "After 'The Alamo' I really wanted to get back to doing regular human being stuff, like being a dad, and the best way to do that was to stay home and write," he told me. "So if I was in movie jail, then you'd have to say that everyone let me design the cell. I got plenty of offers to direct, just ones that weren't right for me."

So how did Hancock finally get "The Blind Side" up and running? And why did the studio that originally acquired the book back out of making the movie? Keep reading:

Is anyone unhappy about the Oscars' snub of Michael Moore?

Let's be honest. Is there really anyone who is up in arms over Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" being left off the Academy's 15-title short list for the best feature documentary? In fact, I would argue that when it comes to a snub of a much-ballyhooed film, the Academy has never managed to make more people happier. Let me count the ways: 

Conservatives are positively dancing in the street, with the New York Post's Lou Lumenick leading the way, gloating over the fact that Moore's "paen to socialism" missed the cut. Next to seeing Barack Obama's health care bill fail, it's hard to imagine any other event making everyone's day on the right, which has been hammering away at Moore for years, always looking for a new chink in his armor.

Liberals aren't all that sad either. For many on the left, Moore has been something of a quiet embarassment for years, coming off more like a carny barker than a serious filmmaker as he has made the media rounds, shilling for his latest Big Event documentary. Liberals like filmmakers who fall into the self-effacing category. When it comes to obnoxious self-promotion, Moore is just as shrill as Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck or anyone on the right.

The Academy itself is way too coy to ever take sides on something like this, but I'm betting the vast majority of its membership is pretty delighted by the Moore snub as well. Remember, his breakthrough film, "Roger and Me," wasn't nominated by the Academy either, largely because Academy insiders have always been wary of Moore's overtly personal "the filmmaker as star" style of documentary filmmaking. Lord knows, the Academy has no problem with Moore's politics. But its purists prefer giving the Oscar's seal of approval to more obscure progressive films, as is evidenced by the short-list nods to socially relevant films like "The Cove," "Food, Inc." and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers."

And last but not least, America's ever-dwindling array of movie critics are positively ecstatic. On Metacritic, "Capitalism" earned a 61 score, which is pretty dreary considering that even a mainstream studio programmer like "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" scored five points higher. If you read the reviews, you'll see that many critics view Moore as being far more talented at marketing than at movie making, especially with "Capitalism," which meandered all over the global landscape in search of a common thread for its story.

So, finally, the Academy has gotten something right. They've found just the right filmmaker to snub without ticking anyone off in the process.

RELATED STORY: FRUSTRATION OVER OSCAR'S DOCUMENTARY SHORT LIST

Photo of Michael Moore by Sean Kilpatrick / Associated Press

Universal's new black eye: African American actors disappear from 'Couples Retreat' poster

 It's perfectly normal for a Hollywood studio to revamp its marketing campaign when a film is released overseas. Every culture is a wee bit different, so marketing tweaks happen all the time. But Universal Pictures really goofed in a big way when it released a new poster for the U.K. release of its hit comedy, "Couples Retreat," which stars Vince Vaughn as one half of a couple who join three other couples on a holiday dedicated to improving everyone's marital relationships.

The original U.S. poster was a bit crowded, showing all eight featured actors in the film. So for the film's U.K. release, Universal's marketing wizards decided to simplify the poster by ... cutting out the film's black couple! All six white actors remain in the U.K. poster. But the actors playing the film's African American couple -- Faizon Love and Kali Hawk -- disappeared altogether. The U.K. poster keeps Vince Vaughn front and center -- after all, he's the star -- while moving the supporting white couples up more into the foreground. (You can read London Mail's story about the gaffe here.) 

No one at Universal is talking on the record, at least so far. But it's obvious that the studio wanted to simplify the poster -- the rule of thumb in marketing is the fewer faces on a poster, the better. It's also obvious that the black actors were the least known members of the cast. Still, no one seemed to realize what a PR disaster would unfold if the only actors who were cut were the African American couple. After Universal was swamped by letters of complaint and negative U.K. press coverage, it quickly moved to quell the outrage by agreeing to return to its original poster with the full cast for future international releases. But the damage was done. Vivienne Pattison, director of Media Watch UK, told the Mail: "I think this was an ill-conceived move. We celebrate diversity in Britain and we could have coped with seeing the same poster used in America."

Studios make dumb decisions all the time. But I've talked to enough frustrated black filmmakers over the years to know the real underlying issue behind these kinds of gaffes. The decision-makers at studios are virtually all white, so they don't see potential racial slights in the same light as they would if they had someone -- anyone! -- of color in the executive suite. When I asked a Universal executive who its highest ranking African American marketing executive would be, he gave an honest answer, saying the studio would pull a zero. So, to be fair, would most other Hollywood studios. 

As always, the real solution to this kind of issue would be for Hollywood to find a way to hire a decent sampling of African American executives so its decision-making wouldn't look so clueless and out of touch with the diversity in the rest of our culture. Studio reps always tell me they are involved in all sorts of affirmative action campaigns. So maybe they're trying to do better, but I'm still waiting to see some concrete results.

Images: Top, the U.S. poster; below, the altered version for the U.K. 

'Oldboy' revisited: Are Hollywood remakes always a bad thing?

When I wrote a post recently about the collapse of negotiations between Mandate and DreamWorks over a deal that could have led to a Steven Spielberg-directed remake of the Korean cult thriller "Oldboy," I expected to get feedback from Spielberg detractors and "Oldboy" partisans. But what really surprised me was the huge outpouring of vitriol toward American remakes in general. It was nearly unanimous: If you let Hollywood remake a movie, they'll only mess it up.

Jack Meoph (btw, nice user name -- who do you think I am ... Bill O'Reilly?) seemed to sum up Hollywood loathing the best when he wrote: "Please keep away from this film Hollywood, you will only ruin it with your homogenized group think."

STWSR chimed in: "Why would you take a seemingly brilliant almost perfect film and RUIN IT!"

And Mike added: "Name one Hollywood remake that was even marginally better than the original?"

Well, actually, I could name a few. Let's start with Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven," which is light years better than the hapless '60s original. I'd defy anyone to say that James Cameron's "True Lies" wasn't far more involving than Claude Zidi's original "La Totale!" And while the original Norwegian version of "Insomnia" is a well-made film, it would be hard to argue that it's any better than Chris Nolan's 2002 remake. The original "Infernal Affairs" is a really good movie, but Martin Scorsese's remake, "The Departed," completely stands on its own as a terrific thriller.

In fact, I'd argue that John Carpenter's 1982 version of "The Thing" is a classic, clearly far more ambitious and fully realized than the Christian Nyby original from 1951. So I'm wondering -- isn't this something of an unfair knee-jerk reaction against the obvious Hollywood stinkers that have often poisoned the well for remakes?

If anyone wants to make a more in-depth case against remakes, I'd happy to hear about it. But does Hollywood really have to keep its mitts off all films from other cultures, especially if a talented filmmaker wants to take a shot at reimagining the film in a new setting? I mean, not every remake has to turn out like "Vanilla Sky," does it?  

An embarrassment for Universal: Fabricated news stories

This is the time of year when movie studios do their part to support America's economically challenged journalistic institutions -- at least publications like the L.A. Times, Variety and the New York Times -- by buying big chunks of Oscar ads to promote the season's leading awards contenders. But Universal Pictures has outdone all its rivals. The studio just paid $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club as part of a settlement with several Alaska newspapers after the studio, in the course of promoting its current release, "The Fourth Kind," created an elaborate series of online news stories that professed to be from real Alaska news publications.

The film claims to be a true story about an outbreak of alien abduction occurring a decade ago in Nome, Alaska. As Fairbanks' Daily News-Miner reports:

"To bolster that claim, articles were posted that professed to be from real Alaska publications, but were actually created to bolster the movie's storyline. The articles included an obituary and news story about the death of a character in the movie, Dr. William Tyler, that supposedly were from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Neither the story nor the obituary ever appeared in the newspaper. Fake articles were listed from other newspapers in Alaska, including the Nome Nugget, alongside authentic news stories. Part of the settlement requires Universal to remove the fake 'news articles' promoting the movie from the Internet."

An attorney representing the Alaskan newspapers said the fake stories undermine newspaper credibility, since "if people can't rely on the fact that when they look at a news article on the Web that it's from the newspaper it appears to be ... it erodes confidence in the world of journalism." The good news is that Universal's $20,000 immediately doubled the Alaska Press Club's annual revenues (I'm not joking).

Although the scam is something of a black eye for Universal, I'd be hard pressed to call it a threat against the future of journalism. If the movie had simply used fictional newspapers instead of real ones, no one would have ever raised a fuss. But in today's Hollywood, where people often float preposterous claims about movie budgets or test screenings, no one seems to notice the difference between reality and make believe. Studios also routinely use all sorts of questionable stealth Web marketing tactics to create viral buzz for their movies. It was just this July that the Wall Street Journal exposed 20th Century Fox for paying a high school valedictorian to plug the studio's "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in her valedictory address, which the studio promptly put up on YouTube, attempting to pass it off as an authentic homemade video.

Still, it's always embarrassing to be caught, even if the stunt seems more clumsy than conspiratorial. Clearly chagrined, a Universal spokesperson e-mailed me the following statement, which if nothing else  makes it clear that the studio should hire a good reporter so its apologies wouldn't sound so stilted and awkward. Here's what Universal has to say:

 "An early element of the online promotional campaign for 'The Fourth Kind' used stories published by some news outlets without permission and inaccurately attributed other stories to papers that were not their origin. When Universal Pictures came to recognize this tactic as overzealous, it immediately removed these stories from the Internet well before the film's release and entered into a mutually satisfactory resolution with the outlets. The film itself challenges conventional beliefs by presenting cases of alien abduction and asking viewers to make up their own minds about its content. Universal regrets that this isolated element of the marketing for the film took this speculation a step too far."

RELATED:

FOX NABBED BY ITS OWN NEWSPAPER IN LAME 'BETH COOPER' VIRAL SCAM:

Oscar watch: Going crazy over 'Crazy Heart'

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to having a serious bout of trepidation when I headed off the other night to see "Crazy Heart," the new Fox Searchlight film that stars Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake, a hard-drinking, faded country star relegated to one-night gigs at bowling alleys and dingy saloons. After all, if there's ever a subject that been mined deeply in movies, it's the saga of the self-destructive country music singer. With so many real-life role models, from Hank Williams to George Jones to Waylon Jennings to Steve Earle (and about 100 others), it's a trajectory that's hard to avoid.

And after you've seen Robert Duvall as the broken-down Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies," you know that it's a hard act to follow. But I'm here to say that "Crazy Heart" is the real deal. It's a beautifully told story (by first-time writer-director Scott Cooper) made even better by a terrific performance by Bridges, who does a wonderful job of showing us a good man who's hit bottom, having run through five or so wives and boozed away all the money he made when he was riding high. If Cooper was worried about any comparisons with "Tender Mercies," he doesn't show it, especially since he cast Duvall in a nice small role as a bar owner who doubles as Bridges' fishing buddy. Maggie Gyllenhaal costars as a vivacious small-town reporter who wheedles the skittish Blake into giving her a series of interviews, which turn into a surprisingly affecting relationship.

I'll leave the serious reviews to the critics, but as a country music fan, I was especially impressed by the film's attention to musical detail. It's pretty obvious that Bridges' performance will catapult him into the best actor Oscar race, but it's also the kind of performance that will impress musicians with the way it captures the idleness of life on the road as well as the angst of a performer who sees how his core audience has blithely deserted him, opting for a new kind of air-brushed, "American Idol" style of country over the rough-edged grit of Bad Blake's era.

Bridges' Blake is full of echoes of a host of old country icons. When I was a young rock writer, I spent a lot of time in smoky clubs, interviewing some of the unadorned original C&W luminaries. Once, preparing to interview Jerry Lee Lewis at a club in Memphis in the 1980s, I put my tape recorder on the table. Glistening with sweat from the pills and alcohol in his system, Jerry Lee said, "Son, a tape recorder is a dangerous weapon," reached around behind his back and pulled out a pistol, which he set lightly on the table, explaining "Now we're even." 

Bridges has a little bit of that edge in his performance too. In fact, there were times when he seemed to be channeling a big chunk of the outlaw country vibe from the 1970s and '80s. To see him on stage singing, sweat dripping off his beard and seeping through his open-neck shirt, is to see someone who's a dead ringer for the ghost of Waylon Jennings, whose own personal life -- booze, cocaine and lots of wives -- isn't that far from the character Bridges plays in the film.

The music in the film is killer old-school country, written by T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, a Texas musician who died earlier this year after spending nearly 40 years playing with Kris Kristofferson (who many will say Bridges resembles at times in the film as well). And as if acknowledging its debt to Jennings, the film has a scene scored to Jennings' own "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way."

The film opens in New York and L.A. in mid-December for an Oscar-qualifying run before going wider after the first of the year. The highest praise I can offer is that "Crazy Heart's" music wonderfully embodies the spirit of the film and the film itself captures the bittersweet, soulful life force of country music.

Photo of Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Crazy Heart" from Fox Searchlight

Rudy Ray Moore: The original king of blaxploitation movies

When I was in high school, one of my pals was considered the coolest kid in our circle, largely because he had a cache of Redd Foxx and Rudy Ray Moore party records. If you've never heard these comedy records -- recorded "live," usually in front of a group of friends at someone's house -- by two of the most influential black comics of their time, they're a revelation. And not just because they're deliriously dirty, full of all sorts of inspired slurs, insults and cuss words so foul that they could peel the paint off a car.

As teenagers, we were transfixed by the sheer raunchiness of it all, as if we'd been allowed to imagine what it might be like to sit next to a great piano player in a whorehouse. In his later years, Foxx ended up crossing over to polite white society with his own TV show, "Sanford and Son." Moore remained a cult figure, always on the fringes, though hugely influential in the African American artistic community, until his death last year at 81. 

Moore made a few movies along the way, two of which are playing tonight at 7:30 pm, presented by the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater. The tribute was put together by Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriter (with Scott Alexander) behind such oddball originals as "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Man on the Moon," a biopic about the late Andy Kaufman.

Karaszewski and Alexander are preparing to write and direct "Big Eyes," which would star Kate Hudson as painter Margaret Keane, the creator of the garish drawings of wide-eyed women and children, who allowed her husband, Walter, to take all the credit for the paintings until the couple had a messy divorce.

I asked Larry to explain why he fell in love with Moore's work, as well as why Moore was such a distinctive figure for so many rappers and filmmakers. He also has assembled a great group of Moore collaborators and admirers for tonight's screening. Here's what Larry had to say:

Will Hollywood's 'Oldboy' remake ever take off?

When it comes to cult classics, few movies can hold a candle to "Oldboy," the deliriously strange and unsettling 2003 Korean thriller directed by Chan-wook Park that is beloved by critics and fanboys alike, having won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The second installment in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," the film chronicles the saga of a man who, after being imprisoned for 15 years, sets out on a methodical search hoping to explain the secret of his captivity.

It's a violent, oddly soulful film that essentially defies description (Roger Ebert takes a crack at it here). Being captivated myself, I can understand why it has so many passionate fans. Martin Scorsese, who knows a good movie when he sees one, was so impressed by the film that he immediately set up a meeting in New York with Park. 

Hollywood has been attempting to mount an English-language remake of the film for some years, an effort that has just hit another speed bump, with news surfacing that prolonged negotiations between DreamWorks and Mandate Pictures to produce the film together have fallen apart. DreamWorks was interested in acquiring the film for Steven Spielberg to direct, a deal that could have involved Will Smith stepping up to star in the remake. But the proposed deal has collapsed, just days after "I Am Legend" screenwriter Mark Protosevich turned in a 25-page outline with a proposed story line for the new film.

As always in these kinds of matters, no one agrees on exactly what happened. The DreamWorks camp says it walked away from the deal, frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations. But other sources say that Mandate, which optioned the remake rights last year, pulled the plug after DreamWorks insisted on having sole ownership of the remake even if Spielberg didn't end up directing the project. Mandate wanted to retain ownership if someone other than Spielberg ended up directing the film.

The "Oldboy" remake has something of a tortured history. In January 2004, even before Park's film debuted at Cannes, Roy Lee's Vertigo Entertainment, a company that specializes in packaging Hollywood remakes of Asian films, having been involved with remakes of  "The Ring" and "Infernal Affairs," brought the remake rights for "Oldboy" to Universal Pictures. The studio brass loved the film, especially Chairman Stacey Snider and Vice Chairman Mary Parent. But its development progress was slow, especially after Parent took a producing gig and Snider left to run DreamWorks.

With the new studio administration having other priorities, Universal put the project in turnaround. Mandate, which has been involved with a number of adventuresome projects, including "Juno" and "The Grudge," optioned "Oldboy's" remake rights last year, eager to produce the picture with Vertigo. When DreamWorks heard that Universal was no longer involved, the studio approached Mandate about teaming up on the project. Snider, a longtime fan, encouraged Spielberg to see the film. Impressed, Spielberg was soon talking about "Oldboy" as a potential directorial project, which led to interest from Smith as a potential star.

However, Spielberg often has a large constellation of film projects on hand as candidates for him to direct. And DreamWorks' desire to have ownership of the project, even if Spielberg didn't end up directing it, seems to have been a sticking point in the protracted negotiations. So now "Oldboy" is back in Mandate's court. Will the remake ever happen? Mandate is looking to move ahead with the project. But many fanboys in the blogosphere have been expressing delight that the project has hit a roadblock, the general consensus being that Spielberg's taste was far too tame and conventional for a project as daring as "Oldboy." 

I'm still hoping that someone will take a crack at the film, since it feels far more challenging than most of the projects making the studio rounds these days. I could think of plenty of filmmakers, starting with David Fincher (if I were a producer, my wish list would always start with David Fincher), "Wanted's" Timur Bekmambetov, "District 9's" Neil Blomkamp, Guillermo del Toro and Tarsem Singh, to name a few.

If anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to share. Until Mandate makes the next move, we'll just have to content ourselves by watching Park's mesmerizing original one more time. 

Photo: (top) Choi Min-sik in "Oldboy." Credit: Tartan Films; photo: Steven Spielberg by Francois Mori / Associated Press.