Let’s be honest, without Twilight we probably wouldn’t even be talking about Summit Entertainment any longer. They have, of course, been around much longer than most of us realize with films such as Memento, American Pie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as part of their production company cred. However, as distributors they have Twilight and the modest hit in Knowing (which they handled domestically and not internationally). Beyond that what are we really talking about?
They managed to squander what I understand to be a rather entertaining teen comedy in Sex Drive, Push bombed, Astro Boy is still in theaters but you wouldn’t know it, Sorority Row (a teen horror with the promise of nudity) earned $11 million and the sin of all sins, Summit’s 17%-Rotten Tomatoes rated Fly Me To The Moon made more money at the box-office than the highly lauded The Hurt Locker. I guess that’s what happens when you put a potential Oscar Best Picture winner in a grand total of 535 theaters. Geniuses over there I tell yah. Geniuses!
So, when I learn from Borys Kit at The Hollywood Reporter that Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dreyfuss and Brian Cox are in negotiations to join Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker in the Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife) directed WildStorm/DC Comics adaptation Red I can’t help but wonder how the studio will manage to screw this one up. I mean, this is one hell of a cast right?
In the film Bruce Willis plays Paul Moses, a former CIA operative with a unique talent for killing that took him around the world, from one hotspot to another, carrying out the deadly orders of his superiors. And when he retired, he wanted to put his bloody past behind him. But when a new administration takes over the White House, the powers that be decide that Moses knows too much, forcing him back into the game against the agency that trained him.
Julian McMahon will play the Vice President with a dark side who is at the center of a shadow conspiracy. Borgnine will play the keeper of the CIA’s darkest records, while Dreyfuss will be a wealthy man who builds a fortune out of lucrative government contracts. Cox is a former Cold War spy and nemesis of Willis.
I can’t seem to find information on what characters Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren will be portraying, but John C. Reilly will play a retired CIA agent paranoid about being assassinated and Mary Louise Parker will be the love interest of Willis’s character.
Jon and Erich Hoeber wrote the script and the film is scheduled to begin shooting early next year with a November 19, 2010 release date already set.
You tell me, do you think this one can outlast the studio that is now saturating the world with The Twilight Saga: New Moon marketing, but spends virtually nothing on marketing the rest of their projects?
