James Cameron's movie bomb

Once it became crystal clear that the great Avatar gamble had paid off handsomely for both James Cameron and 20th Century Fox, it was equally apparent that the director would from here on in be allowed to make pretty much whatever movies he liked. And one possible project was a film based on The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back. But not any more.

Empire (amongst other outlets) reported in early January that Cameron had taken out an option on the aforementioned non-fiction book by Dr. Charles Pellegrino, which at that time was still waiting to be published. A polymath of such supposed prodigiousness as to make Leonardo da Vinci look like a dopehead slacker who can't even be arsed to wipe the hummus stains from his dashiki, Last Train author Pellegrino was already well known to Cameron, having served as a scientific consultant on both Titanic and Avatar.

The Doctor appeared to have come up trumps too when his book was published in February, with The Washington Post review by The Good German author Joseph Kanon raving: 'Charles Pellegrino's account of what it was actually like on the ground in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, culled from survivors' memories and his own work in forensic archaeology, is the most powerful and detailed I have ever read. It puts flesh on skeletons.' Cameron himself appeared deeply interested in the project too, taking time out from Japanese Avatar publicity chores in December to meet with Tsutomu Yamaguchi – the only individual who was officially recognised to have survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. However a Cameron picture based on The Last Train From Hiroshima now appears monumentally unlikely to ever see the light of day, with Charles Pellegrino having become embroiled in major controversy about the veracity of his book.

Fishy business first seemed to be afoot last week when Pellegrino was forced to admit that Joseph Fuoco, one of his quoted interviewees in The Last Train, had not actually been aboard Necessary Evil, which had escorted Hiroshima bomb plane Enola Gay. A statement published by the 509th Composite Group, the US military outfit who carried out the bombing missions on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, stated that the group were 'incensed' by claims made by Pellegrino, and that his 'book is rife with errors'. Regarding Fuoco, the statement read, 'For the record, since Joseph Fuoco was never a member of the 509th and thus not connected in any way with the Hiroshima mission, any statements and descriptions made by him and quoted in this book about what he allegedly did on that mission, what he saw out the window of Necessary Evil, statements made to him before, during, and after the mission by members of the 509th, along with any claims by him to be in 509th group photos and any participation in 509th post strike crew interviews are completely fraudulent and without any merit whatsoever.'

The last paragraph of their statement directly addressed the mooted Cameron adaptation of The Last Train, with the irate veterans making this plea to the director: 'The 509th Composite Group would welcome the opportunity to help Cameron make a historically accurate film about these important events, but strongly cautions that certain accounts in Pellegrino's book are complete fiction and cause great damage to the true history, reputations, and honor of the heroes of the 509th Composite Group.' Fuoco, who died in 2008, was a firefighter during World War II, and The Washington Post reported that Pellegrino had offered the following, somewhat unusual, excuse for accepting his false testimony at face value: 'he couldn't believe a firefighter could provide a false story.' Both the author and his publishing house, Henry Holt and Company, pledged to scrub Fuoco and his fictitious accounts from any future editions of The Last Train to Hiroshima.

However if Pellegrino thought that he and his book had emerged from the incident having suffered nothing worse than a degree of embarrassment then he was as sorely mistaken as Princess Leia was when she figured that putting the lips on Luke Skywalker was a bit of good clean fun. Questions began to be asked about two more figures in The Last Train – namely, Father Mattias, a clergyman allegedly living in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, and John MacQuitty, the man who supposedly conducted Mattias' funeral. The Associated Press have quoted Professor Barton Bernstein of Stanford University history department as being amongst those suggesting that both men were dreamt up by the author. Furthermore, Pellegrino's own scientific credentials have come under serious scrutiny, with The Associated Press also suggesting that Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, from where he apparently received his doctorate, have 'no proof that Pellegrino had such a degree'. Offering another rather curious explanation for a reported anomaly, Pellegrino claimed, 'his PhD had been revoked over a dispute on evolutionary theory'.

Yesterday Henry Holt issued a statement declaring that, 'It is easy to understand how even the most diligent author could be duped by a source, but we also understand that opens that book to very detailed scrutiny... the author of any work of nonfiction must stand behind its content. We must rely on our authors to answer questions that may arise as to the accuracy of their work and reliability of their sources. Unfortunately, Mr. Pellegrino was not able to answer the additional questions that have arisen about his book to our satisfaction.' Clearly having had their fill of the whole affair, Henry Holt are to halt publication of The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back with immediate effect.

So with all these accusations flying around that Pellegrino has been effectively trying to remake Shattered Glass for real, any film derived from The Last Train is now as fanciful a conception as the Necessary Evil testimony of the late Joseph Fuoco. Yet there clearly need not be any fear that James Cameron is going to be left twiddling his thumbs in a torpor of film-making inactivity. When your last two films are the biggest box-office success of all-time and the second biggest box-office success of all-time then you are never going to be short of potential projects to pick from. The director is still attached as producer to a remake of '70s spaceship-injected-inside-the-body hokum Fantastic Voyage (the new version having apparently been written by the Wibberleys, of National Treasure infamy), while there were rumours last December of him working on a new science fiction script with writer Shane Salermo (Armageddon and Shaft). Cameron is down as one of the executive producers of animated anthology movie Heavy Metal, for which he will also helm a segment (as will David Fincher, Zack Snyder and Gore Verbinski). And there is also the prospect of the man who gave us The Abyss and Titanic sloshing back into the water with The Dive, based on the life of French free diver Audrey Mestre, who drowned in an accident back in 2002.

Also lurking on the Cameron production slate (as it has been for the last five years or so) is Battle Angel, based on a manga by Yukito Kishiro which is known as Battle Angel Alita in the west. Taking a break from griping about the Academy's failure to recognise the acting brilliance of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, Avatar producer Jon Landau has been chatting to MTV about the potential of the Battle Angel film, with him identifying one section of the saga in particular that he views as ripe for Cameronization*: “If people are familiar with the series at all, there’s something they call Motorball... that is something that Jim has always been dynamically excited about. It’s racing on a super track, with characters that are built and created in the cyborg world to race against each other in an arena. It’s almost like a gladiator match meets an Indy 500 race... they’re not in cars — it’s their physical being that is out there. Some of them are on roller skates — and Alita participates in this, and she’s on roller blades, while other people might have different devices. It’s a wonderful, rich world to design and develop.” Would this demolition roller derby be in 3D? Why, you betcha! Says Landau: “Jim's gonna do all of his movies in 3D, he'll do even the smallest drama... I think even if Jim were to do My Dinner With Andre he would do it in 3D.”

Battle Angel Alita was a popular Japanese import to the US and UK in the 1990s, with its cyberpunk trappings and violent sci fi action having ticking the boxes of comic book and animation junkies (as well as Kishiro's manga, there have also been two original home-market animes based on the character). The series is known as Gunnm in its native Japan, where the central character – a young cyborg with lethal combat capabilities – is called Gally. The Battle Angel Alita title was coined by the manga's American translator Fred Burke, who picked the name 'Alita' from a baby-naming manual. As Landau's above comments suggest, the junkyard future-world depicted by Kishiro is an evocative setting for a movie, and the female action hero protagonist would appear an obvious fit for Cameron, given his fondness for such characters (Ripley in Aliens, Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, Mace in his Strange Days screenplay, Jessica Alba's Max in TV show Dark Angel).

The following odd detail emerges from the MTV report though: 'After telling us that screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis [Battle Angel co-writer, and scripter on Scorsese's Shutter Island] had opened the duo's eyes to all nine books in the series, Landau said the biggest obstacle now is figuring out which tales to tell from Yukito Kishiro's manga series.' Er, if you're considering making an eyeball-scorching, senses-pummelling $300-$500m blockbuster then would Point One not be familiarising yourself with all the source material you are looking to adapt, without needing to hire a collaborator to point it out to you?

Still, as luck would have it Landau and Cameron should have some time yet to catch up on their manga reading as Battle Angel will most likely have to wait till after the Avatar sequel. Even billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch is pushing for that one - most likely because he secretly hates himself and all that he stands for, and enjoyed Avatar's (reasonably hypocritical) yah-boo-sucks-to-you-corporate-pig-dog message. Either that or he hasn't seen it, and just got all tingly and interested when his underlings suddenly started wheeling in huge trolleys full of cash into his fortress lair of perpetual midnight.

*Cameronization – to deliver visceral movie action sequences, punctuated by inane, soggy dialogue. Not to be confused with the British term Cameronisation, meaning to offer the feeble pretence that a political party is committed to social justice rather than furthering the advantages of those select few already enjoying crisps and cocktails on the establishment yacht, and to do so with such pitiful lack of conviction as to fail to forge any kind of any clear advantage over an incumbent government who could not be less popular if they ate babies for breakfast and pissed in the handbags of old women as they waited to collect their pensions.