Update on Guy Ritchie's Possible Next Moves

I'm not wholly committed to this Guy Ritchie Revival thing. I loved Rocknrolla, true, but I think giving him the keys to Sherlock Holmes is kind of like letting the tram driver at Universal Studios race a Formula One car, or vice versa. Big question mark there for me. And I had forgotten that mega-producer Joel Silver and Mrs. Robert Downey Jr., producer Susan Downey (whose name is on both Rocknrolla and Sherlock Holmes) were already working with Ritchie on a couple movies before Sherlock that might even make less sense to you.Thankfully, Downey reminded us all what those projects were in a conversation with Coming Soon:

"Joel and I had done RocknRolla with Guy and he really wanted to get behind the camera again, which is how RocknRolla came about because prior to that, we had been developing these bigger, sort of tentpole event movies for Warner Bros. that he was wanting to do, but those take time, especially if you're going to do something that is a known title, whether it is Dirty Dozen or Sgt. Rock.

Yeah, that's right: Guy Ritchie may still remake The Dirty Dozen and/or guide the comic book adaptation of Sgt. Rock. News of both projects is not anything new, but I kind of thought he'd passed on them in favor of Sherlock Holmes. Downey sets the record straight on that, however:

"(W)hat happened was after RocknRolla, we were going to be working on these other movies, and Sherlock Holmes, which was farther along than any of those in the process, had come in and the studio, everyone saw RocknRolla and saw what Guy could do. The fact that they were pulling him away from these other projects to focus on this, they saw that there was a bigger marriage that could take place and a lot of pieces working together, it all just kind of made a lot of sense."

I do wish, if people at the studio really saw what Ritchie could do, based on Rocknrolla, that they'd bother to, oh I don't know, market the movie. A little. $4 million in a month is terrible performance, wouldn't you agree?But what's curious about her interview, and maybe it's just because the projects aren't really moving forward at the moment, is what almost sounds like a sense of nostalgia for The Dirty Dozen and Sgt. Rock that makes you wonder if they're ever going to happen. "Those two projects specifically, they still need more work in development," Downey admitted. "I know that Guy, he still has passion for them, but his focus right now is on [Sherlock Holmes]. I do believe that if there was a universe where he could be doing them all right now, he would want to, and we haven't jumped off him and looked for other people yet either." "I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do," Downey said, "because we love those projects but they have to be done right, which is the other reason why we haven't moved forward even with him, because we've got scripts that were good but they hadn't landed just yet."Well, on the bright side, it looks like I'll have plenty of time to warm up to the idea of a Guy Ritchie-directed remake of The Dirty Dozen.

Comments

[Nomad]

It's great to see a possible re-make of The Dirty Dozen. It IS possible to re-make a classic film and have it work well. 3:10 to Yuma is an example of that.

I'm not all that sold on Guy Ritchie directing it, though. Although he's doing Sgt Rock now, I see nothing in his CV that makes me think he is right for Dirty Dozen. We'll have to see how Sgt Rock turns out.

I see Dirty Dozen has been put on hold, though, but hope that changes and we see see an updated version.

Nomad