May 25, 2009

The latest Houdini flick gets a writer

And it's someone familiar to fans of summer flicks, according to IGN:
When Summit Entertainment announced that they had acquired the screen rights to the biography The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, the studio said it was "not looking to make a biopic but rather an action thriller featuring a character who is part Indiana Jones and part Sherlock Holmes." Summit was apparently serious about the Indiana Jones part because IGN Movies has learned from a reliable source that the studio is lining up Kingdom of the Crystal Skull writer Jeff Nathanson to script Houdini. Both Summit and Nathanson's reps at CAA did not respond to our requests for comment at time of publish, so consider this a rumor until he's officially announced. Nathanson shared story credit on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with George Lucas; David Koepp received sole screenwriting credit for it. Nathanson has also scripted Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. His other credits include Rush Hour 2 and Speed 2: Cruise Control. In announcing the project, Summit claimed that the book by William Kalush and Larry Sloman became known for insinuating that Harry Houdini acted as a spy for Britain and was asked to be an adviser to Czar Nicholas II's court in pre-revolutionary Russia. The book also portrayed the master escape artist and magician as a debunker of con artists who pretended to be spiritualists, leading to the controversial theory that Houdini's death was caused by the spiritual movement as payback.
-Thoughts?

4 comments:

  1. he's such a mediocre writer...sigh

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  2. The Terminal I loved...Catch Me if You Can was fun....only Indy was a real downer on his resume to me...

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  3. he's serviceable...nothing more

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  4. I love The Terminal, but aside from that, nothing of his has ever really struck me as being too fantastic

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