Drugs and thugs

Hollywood's naked animus towards movie audiences is generally just about tolerable. But on certain days – today, for example – you have no option aside from grimly relaying the facts, trying not to have a rage-induced stroke, and then going to lie down in a quiet room. So here goes... Oliver Stone is heading down Mexico way, while The Shadow has a new home and director.

Let's kick off with Captain Conspiracy Theory. We are all aware that Ollie Stone is currently beavering away on his Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the movie that looks set to deliver as searingly authoritative a take on the financial crisis as Pearl Harbor did on World War II. With Stone still hunting for his first decent movie of the new millennium though, it is perhaps not surprising he has already lined up his Money Never Sleeps follow-up project. But it's not Wall Street: Money Never Goes To The Toilet. Nor is it Wall Street: Money Never Calls, Never Texts, Never Emails. And it's not even Wall Street: Money NeverEnding Story. No, Deadline Hollywood are instead reporting that Stone is going to direct Savages, based on a book by Don Winslow. The novel is not actually out till July, but Stone has apparently put up his own cash to secure the movie rights, with him and Winslow due to work together on the screenplay. The synopsis of Savages provided by DH is as follows:

'Two pals from Laguna Beach pals share the same girlfriend and a thriving business growing and distributing the best-quality pot on the planet. When they resist being muscled by a Mexican drug cartel, the girl is kidnapped and the ransom is every cent they've made for the last five years. They agree to pay but hatch an alternate plan to get her back, get revenge, and then get lost.'

Which sounds exactly like the movie each and every one of us has spent our entire lives in drooling anticipation of. Indeed it sounds almost too fresh for audiences to take. There may be mass suicides at screenings as puny viewer brains fail to cope with the grandiose ambition of Stone and Winslow's dazzling, philosophically challenging, vision. Maybe it would just be safer for everyone if they never make their movie. In fact, let's just pretend we never mentioned it. Shhh.

Okay, so back in February we reported a new version of The Shadow was apparently brewing over at Sony Pictures, with Sam Raimi down to produce and perhaps also direct. Well, the good people at Latino Review have an update on the project, with Sony apparently having pulled the plug on the whole endeavour after half-a-decade of development stodge. That blow has however failed to fell The Shadow, with Raimi finding a new home for his property over on the Fox lot. The Evil Dead man is apparently no longer hovering near the director's chair though, with David Slade instead in line to press his lips against the megaphone of power. Slade is the Brit film-maker behind Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night (which was co-produced by Raimi's Ghost House Pictures), and he is also in charge on this summer's irrevocable licence to make teenage girls feel a bit funny and part them from their pocket money, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

Now we are all well aware that Hollywood is currently giving originality the kind of antagonistic treatment that Maximilien Robespierre prescribed for royalists back in the latter part of the 18th century, but even within that context a new movie version of The Shadow still manages to look like a supermassive black hole of creative oblivion. Starting life as a radio serial in the 1930s (just like The Green Hornet), The Shadow is a mysterious vigilante (just like Batman and The Spirit) who patrols the streets and rooftops of a crime-ridden metropolis by night (just like Batman and The Spirit), and by day is a millionaire playboy (just like The Green Hornet and Batman). His get-up consists of fedora and coat (just like The Green Hornet and The Spirit and Raimi's own Darkman) and a fresh film of his adventures would effectively be a reboot, as a prior movie had been delivered back in the '90s (just like Batman). Perhaps the only explanation for his proposed revival lies with his special skill of clouding people's minds (picked up while travelling in Asia – just like all that Last Samurai crap in Batman Begins). Normally he trots this out to befuddle his foes, but maybe a similar bewitchment is coming over the studio execs with whom he is coming into contact. Or they might all just be soulless vampires with a zealous commitment to the destruction of cinema in an inferno of brainless, black-hearted greed. Who can truly say?