Oh, GODZILLA– it sounds like you’ve been having sort of a rough time. Hang in there, big guy, while we retrace exactly what went wrong. It seems Legendary filed suit yesterday to remove Dan Lin, Roy Lee and Doug Davison from GODZILLA. They’re also calling for a court arbitration to keep the trio from placing a restraining order on the production which, of course, could stall the Big G from getting onto screens by May 16th, 2014.
Legendary is claiming the suit “concerns Defendants’ assertion that they are entitled to substantial producing fees and backend compensation on the Film.” The studio believes they should now owe nothing more to the defendants than the $25,000 agreed upon in a March 2011 Producer Loan Agreement and that the trio have no rights or claims to Godzilla or his reboot.
Okay, so that’s a mess. But good news on the GODZILLA reboot development front– the King of the Monsters will not be alone. According to a recent “webinar” regarding Warner Bros upcoming advertising slate:
The film will feature more than one monster, confirming that two new monsters will also be wreaking havoc – this in addition to the big guy.
Warner Bros. made it clear that their interpretation of the material “follows the story of a solider” and is “way different” than the Toho Godzilla films.
Oh man. Could we potentially have a Monster Island cropping up on our hands? One would imagine Legendary will be cherry picking some of the franchise’s biggest villains to square off against The Big G, but nothing is confirmed. They say “new” so maybe they’re starting fresh, but God it would be nice to see some familiar monster faces in the reboot. Anyway, take comfort, GODZILLA– though your legal battles may be fierce, you’ve toppled worse foes. Biollante, especially– that plant monster was an a-hole.