Hollywood tends to either copy itself, or just happens to simultaneously tap the zeitgeist and/or collective unconscious. Which is how we get ARMAGEDDON vs. DEEP IMPACT, VOLCANO vs. DANTE’S PEAK, MISSION TO MARS vs. RED PLANET, ANTZ vs. A BUG’S LIFE, THE ILLUSIONIST vs. THE PRESTIGE, and so on. It’s not always the audience who “wins”.
The latest object up for competition seems to be the lunar surface. The Weinsteins are launching APOLLO 18, a documentary-style movie that “unearths lost footage from Apollo 18’s undocumented and covert mission to the moon, revealing disturbing new evidence of other life forms.”
That one is being produced by omnipresent WANTED director Timur Bekmambetov, and will be directed by Trevor Cawood, an FX guy who worked on THE MATRIX sequels and shorts by DISTRICT 9 director Neill Blomkamp.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. dumped the similar hot project DARK MOON the other day, only for Joel Silver’s Dark Castle company to scoop it up (and will therefore have WB distribute it anyway). Like the Weinsteins’ “found footage” project, this one is “based on the idea that NASA’s manned moon missions did not stop with Apollo 17, and follows a black ops mission sent to explore previously classified lunar discoveries.”
DARK MOON comes from writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi (THE FOURTH KIND), and is also being produced by Akiva Goldsman (I AM LEGEND, JONAH HEX).
This sudden glut of “found footage” projects is supposedly what caused the demise of Roland Emmerich’s planned low-budget alien invasion project THE ZONE.
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