20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Voyage remake appears to be back on track and “actively moving forward”, says producer James Cameron. The movie seemed certainly dead and ready to lose another director, after already losing Paul Greengrass who was attached to direct the movie, but dropped out.
He has since been replaced by Real Steel director Shawn Levy, but it seemed he too was about ready to leave the project as he is in motion to start work on an adaptation of the famed monster movie Frankenstein and also Pinocchio, the iconic story about a little wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy.
However, Levy remains the current director of Fantastic Voyage remake, with producer James Cameron still calling the shots. Cameron took time out from the showing of his 3D conversion of Titanic at Paramount Pictures, speaking to Deadline about the progress the 1966 sci-fi remake had achieved.
Cameron stated that the film is about two-thirds the way there in the development stages, before explaining how differently the new movie will be from the original. He says that much like his 1997 hit movie Titanic, the new Voyage will be more emotional. The movie now involves a doctor whose marriage is in trouble, when he decides to then shrink himself into miniature form and inject himself into his sick and dying wife’s body. Things then heat up when the doctor finally reaches the brain of his gravely ill wife, but unfortunately that is all the information that James Cameron was willing to divulge about the project. The original Oscar-winning movie that starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence was a Cold War-set tale which revolved around a Soviet scientist that has found a way to perfect miniaturisation technology. But. before he is able to reveal his secret, he is shot and left dying from a blood clot in his brain after he tries to defect to the U.S. This leaves a team of American scientists only a limited amount of time to get inside the scientists body, find the blood clot, destroy it and get themselves back out of his body.
Since Richard Fleisher‘s version of Fantastic Voyage, the advances in film making technology made this movie ripe for a reboot. The new 3D visuals and CGI capabilities will make the insides of the human body on the big screen even more lifelike, something the original wasn’t able to truly capture.
With Levy still set to be director of the movie, and with script production almost completed the next step for in the process is to find a respectable A-List star to head the cast. Will Smith was one name rumoured for the movie, but the Sci-Fi megastar appears to have passed on the opportunity. Shawn Levy has also expressed an interest in reuniting with Real Steel star Hugh Jackman, but so far there’s been no word if he will be a feasible option. Only time will tell how it all pans out.
Due to the recent delays caused by the dramas of losing a director and almost losing another, an exact date has not yet been set. For now though, the movie seems slated for a release in late 2013, with the script almost done and casting about to begin, audiences can look forward to a ‘Fantastic Voyage’.
By David Harding
