In possibly the greatest slice of weird/cool news we’ve heard in a long time, Michel Gondry has signed on to direct Sony’s Seth Rogen-starring revamp of** The Green Hornet**.
Gondry’s presence on the project does two things. One, it puts paid to rumours that the action comedy, in which the hugely slimmed-down and buffed-up Rogen will play the eponymous millionaire playboy by day, masked crimefighter by night, was in danger of having its plug pulled after the original director, Stephen Chow, left late last year. (Chow, incidentally, remains attached to play Kato, the Chinese assistant to Rogen’s Britt Reid.)
And secondly, it reinforces the notion that this won’t be your average blockbuster. As if the initial hiring of Chow – the demented genius behind** Shaolin Soccer **and Kung Fu Hustle – hadn’t tipped us off that Rogen, his co-writer Evan Goldberg and producer Neal Moritz wanted a visual style and an approach far outside the norm.
With Gondry, the idiosyncratic genius behind dozens of boundlessly inventive music videos and, of course, the brilliant Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, they’re sure to get that. And don’t just expect a lo-fi approach – Gondry has plenty of experience working with CG, but we’re excited about the tone he’ll bring to this thing. Will it have the air of dreamlike reality that defines his best work? We’ll see.
In another surprise move, Gondry courted the project, putting together a proposal for production executives at Sony that apparently blew them away. We’d love to see it – that is, of course, what Blu-rays are for.
Is he a fan of the original **Green Hornet **TV show/comic book? Maybe. Is he perhaps keenly aware that he needs a big hit under his belt to continue making small, personal films? Perhaps. But whatever the reason for Gondry’s involvement, we welcome it.
Sony will release the movie on June 25, 2010.