'Day The Earth Stood Still' Director Finds 'Paradise Lost'

Considering the rapid growth rate of his films, from a straight-to-video Hellraiser sequel to The Exorcism of Emily Rose to The Day the Earth Stood Still, perhaps it's not too big a stretch for director Scott Derrickson to throw his lasso around something with a little more weight and an even bigger profile. Sure, why not? But...uh...Paradise Lost?"I liked the idea of a big-budget movie about the fall of Lucifer and the war in heaven. That's interesting; no one's done that before," said a very confident Derrickson, blithely oblivious to the fact that it would've been done by now if it could've been done by now. The director talked to Sci-Fi Wire (it's a very extensive interview, by the way), and he's really going after Milton's classic 17th century epic poem.

"Warner Brothers and Legendary have enough belief it in that they're spending some real money on it. All of us are in agreement that, let's spend this money, let me do some serious artwork and some serious pre-visualization, and then probably shoot some real material, and make sure that we can do this. Because if we did it, we would be trying to do something that was new and that hadn't been done before, you know? Basically an epic battle movie with non-humans that can fly, and that's really very exciting and interesting. But you only want to do that if you can do it well. And if I'm not good enough to do it, or technology isn't up to date enough to do it, well, then it shouldn't be done."

Some would argue that it shouldn't be done anyway. Logistically, it would be a nightmare, what with your physical depictions of heaven and hell, and then you just wonder if film is the right medium for something like that. Granted, Warner Bros. could be smelling a franchise...

I think my primary concern is that, well, Scott Derrickson would be directing Paradise Lost. Let's put it this way: I've seen all three of his movies, and he's not eating at the adult table when the great directors get together for a holiday meal.

Comments

[Ron]

Based on what i've seen of his movies, they do not seem all that "deep", so I really don't know how he can tackle this one...

It seemed like The Day the Earth Stood Still was a made for TV effort - including the stupid plot gimmicks to allow things to happen in the movie that don't make any logical sense.

[nick]

while the film wasn't as deep as say "apocalypse now," if you didn't understand what was happening, you weren't paying attention... or your stupid.

[nick]

while the film wasn't as deep as say "apocalypse now," if you didn't understand what was happening, you weren't paying attention... or you're stupid.

[cashback]

I suppose in the time he released the films it raised a few eye brows