View From the Phlipside - Movie Rumors

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

If there’s anything I enjoy as much as watching movies it just might be listening to movie rumors.  The process of  picking a movie to make is so convoluted and bizarre that you can never be quite sure what will actually happen and what is just being talked about.  Some movies linger for years before they die or before they get made.  Scripts get re-written, actors change, directors change.  Along the way all kinds of great stories and ideas crop up plus boat loads of really awful ones.  For example, to no one’s great surprise, talks have already begun on a “Karate Kid” sequel after it’s great start.

So what’s floating out there right now.  Let’s start with people who are messing with concepts.  I haven’t seen the newest Sherlock Holmes movie because I love the original stories and I’m not sure how I’ll like this “new interpretation”.  The same goes for the rumored new “Don Quixote”.  One description of the approach describes it as “Pirates of the Caribbean” style story.  The Lord of La Mancha isn’t crazy and there really is a fantasty world.  Ummm, I don’t think so.  How about a movie version of the Jim Henson TV show “Fraggle Rock”?  Seems director Cory Edwards and the studio suits at the Weinstein Company are at loggerheads over the approach.  The suits claim it’s not “edgy” enough.  Sprocket and the Doozers need to be edgy?  Maybe something a bit more “Avenue Q”?

Prequels are a big thing right now as is 3-D.  So maybe something that combines them both?  Folks are looking at a prequel of “The Wizard of Oz” that looks at how the whiziful wiz ends up in Oz.  At the moment it looks like Sam Raimi will direct and Robert Downey Jr. will play the man behind the curtain.  Also in prequel mode at the moment is Ridley Scott who would like to revive the “Alien” franchise.  He wants to go back to the beginning and explore a few things that he thinks went unexplained in the original.  Both “Oz:The Great and Powerful” and the Alien prequel would be done in 3-D.

Summer movies are here and the rumor mill is churning.  It’s a good time to be a movie fan.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010