Hollywood Sees Red

Pre Production for the comic book movie Red has attracted a team of talented actors to the project. It has been reported that Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Mary Louise Parker, and  John C. Reilly have joined the project. And now Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Dreyfuss, and Brian Cox have expressed interest in joining the film. It remains to be seen if every member of this massive ensemble will  make it into the movie, but its making it sound like this movie could be a big deal.

Red is based off the three-issue comic miniseries by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. The story centers on a former black ops agent (Willis), who has been retired, but now has younger, more high-tech assassins showing up to kill him. There is some intrigue added by the White House some how being involved in the nefarious scheme.

Its being speculated that McMahon would take on the part of the Vice President with a dark side who is at the center of a shadow conspiracy. As for the other new cast members, Borgnine is said to play an agent who is the keeper of the CIA’s darkest records, while Dreyfuss will be a wealthy man who builds a fortune out of lucrative government contracts. Cox plays a former Cold War spy and the nemesis of Willis.

Principle photography on the film will begin in Toronto before moving to Louisiana with an eye on a release in 2010. Robert Schwentke has been to direct the movie, but he sends up some red flags with thoughts on the movie. He has said that the tone of the film would be much lighter than Ellis’ original story.

“I love the script,” Schwentke said. “It’s very funny, which the comic book isn’t. I like switching gears and this is a movie that allows me to do something light hearted in tone and is also an action movie.”

Schwentke claims that the change in tone is necessary due in part to the short length of the original three-issue miniseries. With a shorter comic book series to base the movie on, screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber have had to expand the script in order to have a large enough story for the big screen. One of the areas that is being expanded is the back story of Willis’s character, which was not explored in the comics.

We all know that there are changes when you adapt material for movies. Whether its comic books, novels, an autobiography, whatever, there isn’t an exact page to page translation from the source to the screen. Changes will be made, and in cases like this you need to add more to it in order to fill out a feature length movie. However, the goal is to capture the feel and the spirit of the original material. And it seems like they are doingthe exact opposite with this movie. It bothers me is that they are changing the tone of the source. That seems like something that would really take the movie away from what the comic book was supposed to be. I won’t be too hard on it until I see the movie, but I don’t like the sound of changing the tone that was intended by the original creators.

Discuss it in the forums.