Hollywood is all about excess. That’s the main reason I’m not really surprised to hear that there is yet another sword-and-sandals film entering active production development. This time the tale of Jason and the Argonauts will be mined once again for a film currently entitled The Argonauts.
Zak Penn, the writer who is best known for adapting such comicbook properties as The Incredible Hulk and The X-Men for the big screen, is writing and will produce The Argonauts for 20th Century Fox. (He’s also currently writing The Avengers movie.)
Hollywood just can’t seem to get enough of these types of movies lately. The production slate on toga inspired epics is starting to get pretty long indeed. Warner Bros. currently has a Clash of the Titans remake in the works with Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) directing as well as a sequel (prequel?) to 300. Meanwhile, Relativity Media, is determined to enter the game and has fast-tracked War of Gods about the Greek warrior Theseus, who led a fight against imprisoned titans.
And don’t think anyone has forgotten Hercules. There’s currently at least three films in production that feature the famous warrior. Among them are Universal Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment’s Hercules: The Thracian Wars with Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) directing. Universal has another. They are producing God of War, an adaptation of the popular epic Greek myth-inspired video game series with Brett Ratner attached.
At any rate, Fox is letting Penn do his own take on the classic Greek tale with The Argonauts. In Greek mythology, the Argonauts (named after the ship Argo) were a band of heroic sailors who accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece.
Interestingly, DreamWorks is also developing a project entitled The Argonauts. In their film, a group of treasure hunters discover the wreck of the mythological sunken ship, thought to have been captained by Jason, and are transported back in time to ancient Greece.
Expect one of these films to change their title before too long.
I'm pretty excited about these movies. This is right up my alley. I guess we will see some of them duke it out at the box office.
Yeah, I didn't think, at first, that it would be much of an issue that there are several in the works at the same time. However, the more they put into production the more I get the feeling that some of them are going to be directly competing with one another. It remains to be seen how different they end up.
Hopefully it'll be good since it's from the guy who did X Men.