New Director Emerges from 'The Black Lagoon'

It's been a crazy year for Carl Rinsch. The commercial director was at one point going to direct the Alien prequel, at least according to Tony Scott. Now that's his brother, Ridley's, gig. Then Rinsch grabbed 47 Ronin, the Keanu Reeves samurai movie. And it looks like Universal smells what the Rinsch is cookin', because The Los Angeles Times says he's now the new director of record on the update of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

That's a pretty big project for a guy who hasn't directed a movie yet, don't you think? I mean, in light of the problems da U has had with The Wolfman, this is either a supreme vote of confidence or it's completely misguided, no offense to Rinsch, who is clearly a hot property at the moment. He replaces Breck Eisner (Sahara and the upcoming The Crazies remake), who was pulled off the project only to move on to a new remake, David Cronenberg's The Brood. Eisner's revision of Gary Ross' script has apparently also been scrapped, but I think we could have all saved Universal money by pointing out that Gary Ross is one of the great American screenwriters and Breck Eisner...well, his dad used to run Disney. Can't say much beyond that at this point; Sahara blew and wound up in court for a couple of years.

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Breck Eisner Updates 'Flash Gordon' and 'Black Lagoon' Remakes, Irritates Me

Oh, to be Breck Eisner. You recognize the last name, surely; he's the son of former Disney boss Michael Eisner, and I'm not saying that has anything at all to do with him landing in the director's chair, but his studio debut had a budget of $130 million. Sahara didn't make money and on top of that, was embroiled in a four-year legal match with writer Clive Cussler.

Most directors would probably aim for smaller projects on the heels of losing a studio money, but Eisner is hard at work putting together huge remakes of Flash Gordon and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. He's also finishing up The Crazies, another remake, which is due out in September. Incidentally, three remakes in a row should be the limit for any director. Eisner had updates on both Flash and Black Lagoon, telling Arrow in the Head, "I love them both, they're both big movies. I think I will push both of them forward at full pedal and hope one of them goes first."

"The thing about Flash is, you've got to throw away the 80s version of it. I want it to be intense, aggressive, gritty and real. For me it's about reinventing Flash - we're still staying true to the adventure origins of it, and the adventurous spirit in that movie, absolutely. It's this man brought to another planet and uniting the disperate groups on Mongo, but there is a gritty, intense, dynamic, active quality to the movie. Very modern. It's not camp."

(Shrug) I don't know what any of that means. I certainly haven't seen enough of Eisner's work to have an idea of what the film might look like, and all I really picked up on is it won't be as flamboyant as the one with the Queen soundtrack. Otherwise, all I see is a load of adjectives.

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