If you held out faint hope that Hugh Jackman wouldn't be helping Shawn Levy box robots, and would abandon it for a feature film adaptation of A Steady Rain, kiss it goodbye now. Variety reports that DreamWorks' Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider have green-lit Real Steel, making it the studio's first big financial project since it split with Paramount, and had to find its own money.Spielberg was attached to the project as executive producer when it was first announced, and it seems that it's been a real passion project for him. DreamWorks bought the project back in 2005, and it was one of the films they held onto after splitting from Paramount. "When we took it with us, we really highlighted it as something we would put the pedal to metal on," said DreamWorks co-president of production Mark Sourian. "It's a project that Steven always wanted to do. It just came together rapidly after we left Paramount." The film will be made for the relatively low budget of $80 million, and will begin production next June.
With a low budget to avoid Transformers excess, perhaps the magic of Spielberg and Richard Matheson can overcome the kiddie tendencies of Shawn Levy, and turn it into something special. A lot of commenters mentioned that Matheson's story was adapted into an episode of the Twilight Zone called Steel. Happily, it's online and I've embedded it below the jump. It really is a good episode, and while Levy keeps stressing that his Real Steel is grounded in its "father-son relationship," I hope it can retain a bit of Matheson's grit. I could be happy with a robot version of Million Dollar Baby.
1. Richard Matheson wrote an original story for The Twilight Zone television series, broadcast 3/16/62 on CBS; the episode titled “Little Girl Lost” about a child who falls through a portal in her bedroom wall and into another dimension. Her father using a rope tied around his waist enters the closing portal and pulls his daughter out just in the nick of time. The episode starred Tracy Stratford, Sarah Marshall and Robert Sampson.
“Poltergeist” (1982) was produced by Spielberg, who took sole authorship of the story and co-writing credit for the screenplay in which a child falls through a portal (her bedroom closet) and into another dimension. Her father, using a rope tied around his waist, enters this “portal” and pulls his daughter out just in the nick of time.
That thin line between homage and ripoff is something you toe, you don’t cross—not without giving attribution to the source material, Richard Matheson.
Resorting to Matheson (credited or not) is chronic behavior on the part of Spielberg, due largely to the fact that the director isn't really a writer. He's a patron.
Posted at 12:08PM on Nov 24th 2009 by Frederick Richardson