Here There Be Monsters – Where Be the Star and Director?

Steve Barton   |  

Apr 5, 2012

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We really hate these would be/could be “in talks with” stories, but hey, we gotta keep up with the Joneses. Whoever the hell they may be. In fact we’re taking it upon ourselves to blame said Joneses for everything we don’t like… starting now.

According to New York Magazine’s Vulture, director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, Orphan) is in negotiations to take control of the long-gestating Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros. co-production of Here There Be Monsters, a Brian Helgeland script which he offered to Bradley Cooper to star in as its leading man. If all goes to plan, Cooper would play real-life Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones, albeit a much younger Jones, well before he had famously “not yet begun to fight” the Brits. After he’s stripped of his British naval commission, Jones is hired by a shipping magnate to investigate the disappearance of merchant ships in the North Atlantic, which are used as toothpicks by a giant squid.

Meanwhile Collet-Serra is still attached to Warner Bros.’ Harker, a revisionist take on the classic Dracula tale that’s told from the point of view of the Scotland Yard detective tasked with solving a string of grisly, blood-draining homicides committed by the Transylvanian transplant. Harker is scheduled to start production in 2014 with Russell Crowe in the title role.

And let’s not forget about Akira, which Collet-Serra had been brought aboard to direct last July but stalled when Warner Bros. balked at the inflated 90-million-dollar budget, insisting that Collet-Serra shave down to a less frightful number.

Oh, and isn’t Bradley Cooper next scheduled to film The Hangover 3? We’ll see how this all shakes out.

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