The Twitter feed for Production Weekly has become a hot bed of mini movie updates over the past year and most often times I ignore it quite simply because taking the time to turn a 140 character or less production note into a full post is a waste of time, but last night an interesting detail was announced that can be expanded upon.
The update said James Cameron is developing a Shane Salerno-scripted sci-fi action script for Fox, described as an “event” film set in the future. This, of course, has people scratching their heads wondering what it could be. Well, the only way to figure that out is to see what Shane Salerno has been up to, which leads us to this year-old story.
Back in September 2008, The Hollywood Reporter said Fox has picked up Doomsday Protocol in a seven figure deal, an original spec by Shane Salerno. Plot details were being kept under wraps, but it was known to be an epic science fiction adventure in the vein of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai involving a group of aliens and humans with various abilities who are brought together to save Earth.
Sounds like it could be right up Cameron’s alley, especially considering it’s at Fox where Cameron made his most recent epic Avatar, as well as Aliens and Titanic. Also, a seven-figure deal means we are talking about a hefty-sized project.
In June of this year, Salerno was mentioned once again in Variety as currently writing a project that James Cameron was producing at Fox. Considering the Production Weekly updated never specifies Cameron as director this could very well be, and most likely is, the same project although IMDb lists Doomsday Protocol and an Untitled James Cameron Project separately. But that hardly means very much.
Salerno’s most recent credits are limited and his last film screenplay was the awful AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem which was preceded by Shaft in 2000 and Michael Bay’s Armageddon before that. For some reason The Hollywood Reporter says he also penned Ghost Rider, but that isn’t true, that was all Mark Steven Johnson.
