{"id":39505,"date":"2016-11-15T19:16:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T00:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=39505"},"modified":"2016-11-15T19:20:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T00:20:04","slug":"paramount-taking-green-hornet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2016\/11\/15\/paramount-taking-green-hornet\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Taking On THE GREEN HORNET"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Green<\/a><\/p>\n

The Green Hornet strikes again!!<\/p>\n

Director Gavin O\u2019Connor and Paramount Pictures are teaming to take a new stab at bringing the classic radio hero to the big screen. Deadline is reporting that O’Connor has secured the rights to the character and has teamed with the studio with the hop of launching a new franchise. O’Connor will be working with video game writer Sean O\u2019Keefe in developing the screenplay.<\/p>\n

O’Connor, whose last film, The Accountant<\/strong> starring Ben Affleck, is still in theaters, professes to be a Green Hornet fan and told Deadline<\/a> that he had been wanting to take a shot at bringing the hero to the big screen for some time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been wanting to make this movie \u2014 and create this franchise \u2014 since I\u2019ve wanted to make movies… As a kid, when most of my friends were into Superman and Batman, there was only one superhero who held my interest \u2014 The Green Hornet. I always thought he was the baddest badass because he had no superpowers. The Green Hornet was a human superhero. And he didn\u2019t wear a clown costume. And he was a criminal \u2014 in the eyes of the law \u2014 and in the eyes of the criminal world. So all this felt real to me. Imagine climbing to the top of the Himalayas, or Mount Everest, or K2 over and over again and no one ever knew? You can never tell anybody. That\u2019s the life of Britt and Kato. What they do, they can never say. They don\u2019t take credit for anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Created in 1936 by George W Trendle and Fran Striker, the Green Hornet was the secret identity of crusading newspaper publisher Britt Reid. Together with his valet Kato, whose ethnicity fluctuated depending on whether or not we were at war with Japan at the time, Reid masqueraded as a masked criminal in order to infiltrate and bring down crime mobs. Striker was the creator of the popular The Lone Ranger<\/em> western radio series and eventually linked toe two by making Reid the Ranger’s grand-nephew.<\/p>\n

The Green Hornet first made the transition to the silver screen in 1940 in the first of two Saturday morning matinee serials. While Van Williams starred as Reid\/the Green Hornet in the 1966\/67 TV adaption of the hero, it was Bruce Lee as Kato who really stood out. In the 1990s, George Clooney almost took on the role for a film at Universal until Steven Spielberg convinced the actor to instead take the lead in 1997’s The Peacemaker<\/strong>, the first film from Spielberg’s Dreamworks studio. After a brief stay at Miramax, where Kevin Smith took a swing at developing the film, the film rights eventually landed at Sony, which produced the disappointing 2011 film which starred Seth Rogen.<\/p>\n

O’Connor states that he has been bidding his time, waiting for the rights to become available to make his vision of the charactr. And over that time, he has put a lot of thought into exactly what he wants to do.<\/p>\n

For almost 20 years now I\u2019ve been tracking the rights, watching from the sidelines as they were optioned by one studio or another. When I discovered the rights were available again, I tracked them down, partnered with Peter Chernin and we set the movie up at Paramount. With the rights now in our loving hands, I\u2019m beyond excited to bring The Green Hornet into the 21st century in a meaningful and relevant way; modernizing it and making it accessible to a whole new generation. My intention is to bring a gravitas to The Green Hornet that wipes away the camp and kitsch of the previous iteration. I want to re-mythologize The Green Hornet in a contemporary context, with an emphasis on story and character, while at the same time, incorporating themes that speak to my heart. The comic book movie is the genre of our time. How do we look at it differently? How do we create a distinctive film experience that tells itself differently than other comic book movies? How do we land comfortably at the divide between art and industry? How do we go deeper, prompt more emotion? How do we put a beating heart into the character that was never done before?<\/p>\n

When we meet Britt Reid he\u2019s lost faith in the system. Lost faith in service. In institutions. If that\u2019s the way the world works, that\u2019s what the world\u2019s going to get. He\u2019s a man at war with himself. A secret war of self that\u2019s connected to the absence of his father. It\u2019s the dragon that\u2019s lived with him that he needs to slay. And the journey he goes on to become The Green Hornet is the dramatization of it, and becomes Britt\u2019s true self. I think of this film as Batman upside down meets Bourne inside out by way of Chris Kyle [American Sniper]. He\u2019s the anti-Bruce Wayne. His struggle: Is he a savior or a destroyer? Britt made money doing bad things, but moving forward he\u2019s making no money doing good things. He must realize his destiny as a protector and force of justice by becoming the last thing he thought he\u2019d ever become: his father\u2019s son. Which makes him a modern Hamlet. By uncovering his past, and the truth of his father, Britt unlocks the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the radio series never had the means to delve deep into the character’s psychology in the way that O’Connor seems interested in doing. It is possible that this version could be a hard swing of the pendulum away from the comedic tone attempted in the Rogen film. But is that a good idea? I tend to think not. The series was pulpy adventure – not too campy, not too deeply introspective. The tone here is a tricky one to capture and hopefully O’Connor will be able to capture it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Green Hornet strikes again!!<\/div>\n

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