As most of you have probably heard, David Fincher is involved in quite a row with Paramount over the run time of his upcoming Brad Pitt starring fantasy drama THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, so much so that he's decided to relocate HEAVY METAL, his remake of the 1981 sexily violent animated film, to another studio and not because Paramount was spooked as we previously speculated.
According to an interview uncovered by the folks over at Playlist with editor and publisher of "Heavy Metal" magazine, Kevin Eastman, here's what really happened: "We developed it for Paramount in January... And it was time for them to make a decision [about going forward with the project] and they were at odds with Fincher over another project, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' [because] they wanted him to reduce the running time... and so they said, 'Until you step up to do what we want you to do with Benjamin, we're not going to greenlight any other of [your] movies.' And David said, 'Fine, fuck you, I'm going to set up [Heavy Metal] somewhere else,' so we jumped over to Sony and set it up there."
The film will, of course, be a series of shorts featuring the half-naked women, rough sex, beefcakes and all around mutant weirdness we've come to love from the magazine and that's featured in the original film and it seems Fincher's assembling quite an impressive line-up of directors to provide just that. Along with Fincher himself, Eastman mentioned that Guillermo Del Toro, Gore Verbinski and Zack Snyder have all expressed interest in directing a segment. Groovy. Click the above link for the full interview.
Extra Tidbit:
The original French magazine on which "Heavy Metal" is based was called "Howling Metal".
