Well Diabolik (cool name pardner) came slinking in from the set of MI2 in Australia to drop me a line telling me what is on the up and up concerning John Woo and KING'S RANSOM. Also, I've found out that John Woo and Terrence Chang are producing with the folks from IGNITE... well they're producing Lance Mungia and Jeffery Falcon's next film OUT WEST. So keep your ear to the ground for that project as well as KING'S RANSOM... I'm curious about anything that Woo is involved in!
With all due respect to Bob the Tomato, at least one fact in his bulletin was wrong: Mike Werb and Michael Colleary are not currently working on "King's Ransom." Those guys finished their last rewrite about 14 months ago. I can definitely tell you, however, that the reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
"King's Ransom" is an action comedy. Since John Woo is famous in the United States chiefly for his hero films, many of his fans don't know that he is actually a very funny man who made lots of comedies in HK before "A Better Tomorrow." (John also loves classic American musicals.) After "Broken Arrow" and "Face/Off," he wanted to do something light and breezy and just plain fun.
John had been developing a hard-action script called "King's Ransom" with an excellent writer named John McCormick ("Tokyo Pop"), about a heist of the English Crown Jewels. John Woo's vision of the story was evolving, however, into a caper movie in the spirit of "Topkapi," (HARRY NOTE: SEEK OUT TOPKAPI AND WATCH IT, BRILLIANT MOVIE) and "Big Deal on Madonna Street" (HARRY NOTE: UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE YET TO SEE THIS MOVIE)... playful ensemble pieces with romance, music ... and very little gunplay.
The script Mike Werb and Michael Colleary re-worked was a love triangle in which a woman jewel thief is torn between her reckless partner-in-crime and her new boyfriend, a Dudley Do-Right FBI agent, who in turn has no idea his new girlfriend is the mysterious jewel thief whom he is trying to catch. There are lots of casino heists, motorcycle escapes, armored car thefts, acrobatic museum robberies, noble heroes and double-crossing bad guys. In short ... it was very much a John Woo movie, but without a big body count.
John was very happy with that draft and even started to meet with actors about the lead roles. But not surprisingly, Fox was hoping for a trademark-John Woo, hard action star-vehicle with lots of shoot-em-up. Consequently, they asked for more work on the script in order to snag an AAA-list movie star, and ... well, John got impatient and moved on to MI2, which was going ahead quickly.
Meanwhile, another writer was assigned to "King's Ransom." Drafts are still being written, and there is still a great deal of enthusiasm at Lion Rock (John and Terence Chang's company) and at Fox.
As for John's supposed negativity about "King's Ransom:" he might truly be soured on it, but I doubt it. In the grueling dog days of the "Face/Off" production, you might remember the stories that John swore off making ANY movies again, especially big action movies ... like MI2! So I think it's safe to take his disavowel with a grain of salt ... at least for now.
John has invested a lot of love and hard work in "King's Ransom." Since it's one of his pet projects, I wouldn't sign its death certificate just yet.
Diabolik
