The announcement of a new GODZILLA film at Comic Con last year sent fans into a spiral of excitement, probably in the hopes of seeing a proper adaptation since we’re all still reeling from Roland Emmerich‘s botched debacle in 1998. This time out MONSTERS director Gareth Edwards is at the helm, working from a story by David S. Goyer and a script by Max Borenstein (THE SEVENTH SON). Now, it appears that former Walking Dead showrunner and genre helmer Frank Darabont is coming onboard to do one final rewrite.
It’s unclear just what Darabont will be tweaking (or why), but his involvement always ups the game a bit and adds a nice splash of clout to any project. Although he’s currently preparing his new AMC series L.A. Noir for TNT, it appears he’s got a little extra time to lend a hand to help out a big, destructive lizard.
In more somber news for the project, however, is that Warner Bros. appears to be on the outs with original producers Dan Lin and Roy Lee, who came into Legendary with a Toho rights deal for GODZILLA.
Here’s the gist from Deadline:
“…Lin and Lee refused to reduce the fees they signed on for when the original deal was made. Legendary brass feels it has the latitude to get rid of them, and is doing just that, exercising a pay or play clause and paying them upfront money to go away, with no back-end or credit on the film. The potential back-end on a global franchise is where the big bucks are.”
Could this affect the production start? It’s hard to say, but unlikely. It seems a payoff is in order, which is all transparent to us, really. We just want to see GODZILLA destroy shit and fight another like-sized behemoth.
GODZILLA is slated to begin shooting in March with an towards a 3D release on May 16, 2014.