Brad Bird has his hands full doing press for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, and while he’s on the trailer, he’s been asked about another project he’s been circling for a long while now, 1906.
The film follows the story of the great San Francisco earthquake of that year, and it’s been in Bird’s head for years now. So what’s taking so long?
It’s a miniseries that you want to get into a movie-sized box. It’s all script. The internet is not a very reliable place for information… There have been reports that it was budget, but it never got that far,” Bird told MTV. “It wasn’t like we licked the story problems and people looked at it and went, ‘That’s too expensive.’ It’s a very challenging story to get together and it has to be done carefully.”
What does he have envisioned for it, should it get made?
“It’s trying to get personal stories in a large event that’s historically based. But, a lot of what is interesting about that project is not necessarily the earthquake and fire — it’s all the stuff that was happening right before that happened. It’s an amazingly, particularly unique moment in that specific place, at that specific time.”
Bird is a fantastic director, and I’m sure if he managed to get his vision to life, it would be a great film. Hopefully after GHOST PROTOCOL, he can get it sorted out.