I am a huge fan of Tim Burton. His films have often touched me in ways that no other film or filmmaker has. While he has a visual quality that is all his own and should be respected, he has found ways to make his characters and stories speak to me on a variety of levels.
Those were the days of yesterday.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the guy and his work, but his upcoming works, although grand, doesn’t blow my skirt up anymore as to when I heard he was signing on to the works of the failed Superman, or Sleepy Hollow, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or heck, even Planet of the Apes. But I’ll still support him every step of the way because damn it, I’ve earned the right more so than any other bandwagon, Hot Topic fan of his. Of course, this all started when he agreed to work on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to which I feel he lost his deep emotional connection with his characters that I loved so admirably.
So what’s the scoop? Burton has a massive list of projects that are in the early development stages, some I’m excited for, others not so much.
Rumored is that Burton will be shooting ‘Dark Shadows’ in January, re-uniting him for the 8th time with Johnny Depp. This project is one I am anxiously awaiting. Burton doing a Vampire movie…. and doing it right! Originally he had hired his frequent screenwriter John August to pen the script, but due to delays with Depp’s schedule with Pirates 4, the project was forced into development hell.
This result lead Burton to sign on with Disney/Dreamworks to make ‘Monsterpocalypse’ in which he took John August with him. August is currently scripting this out, and wouldn’t you know it, progress on Dark Shadows moves forward to which Burton needed to find a new writer to finish the script with his development team committed to another project.
‘Dark Shadows’ and ‘Monsterpocalypse’ are racing with one another to have finished scripts because it is not guaranteed that Shadows will be ready for a January start date. Even worse, Depp has been suggesting that he will be taking a well deserved vacation for an indefinite amount of time once he wraps ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’. Monsterpocalypse on the other hand, is a film I am not excited about. Honestly, I think it sounds stupid. Burton doing gigantic robots fighting against gigantic monsters while destroying parts of the world? Doesn’t sound like a Burton-type project to me and unfortunately I can’t get behind it. Michael Bay, maybe.
Additionally, because of Burton’s work with Disney which lead to their most financially successful hit of all time with Wonderland, the studio is doing everything and anything to keep him. This lead to Monsterpocalypse obviously (his work with Dreamworks on ‘Sweeney Todd’ was a huge plus too) and on a new project called ‘Maleficent’, which yes is about Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent’s point of view. Burton hired Linda Woolverton who wrote Wonderland and a few other respectable Disney projects and Angelina Jolie is signed on to star in the titular role. This has just as much chance as the three other rumored Burton projects to start filming, although Jolie stated that the script won’t be ready for a while therefore she is working on contracted films until she is ready for her first Tim Burton vehicle. I am on the fence with this one. Not a fan of Sleeping Beauty, but I admit I never really gave it a chance. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen the Disney film at all, at least not all the way through.
And if things couldn’t get any more complicated, it gets even worse. As Burton anxiously awaits for a full green-light on the numerous projects listed above, he has signed onto direct another stop motion animated film with a reboot of ‘The Addams Family’. Originally a rumor, it was confirmed that it was a project a studio was developing with Burton in mind. Today we received word that Burton has hired writers for the gig, re-uniting him with his ‘Ed Wood’ screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who incidentally not only wrote the Edward D. Wood, Jr. biopic for Burton, but also wrote the failed Believe it Or Not which had Jim Carrey in the lead role, and they also wrote ‘Big Eyes’, the true story of artist Margaret Keane that Burton himself is producing. On top of that Burton is producing ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ that currently has no director but Timur Bekmambetov is inkling for the job and he’s also producing. The two worked together as producers on the animated flick ‘9’.
Should we throw one more coal into the fire? Why not. Burton is currently directing the stop motion animated film ‘Frankenweenie’ for Walt Disney Studios that now officially has a release date of March 9, 2012. At least one of these projects seems like a done deal and it’s at least a project I am in full support of as I loved his original short. Oh yeah, and Pixar wants him too. It doesn’t hurt that Pixar/Disney Animation president John Lassater is a former schoolmate with Burton and has talked dramatically over the last few years of a Burton/Pixar collaboration. This was started with the recent deal that Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare before Christmas has joined with the animation company earlier this year.
In short, the projects are ‘Frankenweenie’, ‘Dark Shadows’, ‘Monsterpocalypse’, ‘Maleficent’, ‘The Addams Family’, ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’, ‘Big Eyes’, and a Pixar film. Less than 50% are projects I’m interested in. But we’ll see what happens.
