Taika Waititi set to make ‘Flash Gordon’ live action movie
Whenever we hear that Taika Waititi has an idea he wants to bring to the big screen we get all kinds of excited for it, and it’s with great anticipation that we can now confirm that Waititi is set to throw it back and resurrect Alex Raymond’s classic science-fiction adventure hero Flash Gordon for the big screen. And it’s set to be a live-action adaptation at that.
As reported by MovieWeb, it has now been confirmed that Waititi will be directing the now live-action project after he originally pitched it as an animated movie. Talking about the project, Jungle Cruise producer John Davis, who is producing Flash Gordon said “Taika is writing it. It was a movie that was a huge influence on him growing up. It is one of his favorite movies. He initially said to me, ‘Let’s do it animated.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ Then we got into it and started developing it and he said, ‘No, let’s do it live-action.’ I said, ‘Even better.'”
Attempts to bring Flash Gordon back to the big screen have been numerous, but now it finally looks like we’re on a roll to having the film released for the big screen with Waititi at the helm. Anyone who is familiar with the director’s work on the much-lauded Thor: Ragnarok, would have seen the same 1980s style design aesthetic that is very much in keeping with the cult classic 1980 Flash Gordon film starring Sam Jones. And now the fact that Waititi is going to be directing his energy towards this production is a reason to get very excited about.
On Waititi’s pitch for the animated movie, before it turned into a now live-action adaptation, Davis said it was created with immense passion for the source material and a desire to want to bring that to the big screen.
“He has the most fantastically interesting vision for this movie. And you can only know it is Taika. It is what he does. It is the way he looks at the world. He is the greatest guy in the world. He is the funniest guy in the world. And he thinks on a different plane. And this movie embraces everything that’s special about Taika, and his vision. It harkens in a very interesting way to the original conception from the comics,” he shared.
Davis said that the Flash Gordon project was first discussed during the release of Thor: Ragnarok, but that it was Waititi’s quintessential Kiwi comedy Hunt for the Wilder People that got him interested in working with the New Zealand writer-director. “He did this little movie in New Zealand that was just insane, that I loved… and that’s what got me interested in him,” recalled Davis. “We sat down just to talk in general. We went to a bar together with this guy, Matt Reilly, who was an executive at Fox. We started kicking around ideas. And so, this is six years in the making, right? So I’ve waited for him a lot, a lot, a lot of time, but his enthusiasm has remained steadfast. And only he’s going to be able to direct this movie because only he should direct this movie. It is special.”
While Waititi is immensely busy, having now moved into post-production on the eagerly anticipated Thor: Love and Thunder, along with also developing soon to air TV series Reservation Dogs and working busily on a new Star Wars film, Davis said he was happy to work to the director’s schedule to get the project on track.
“We’ve been through the development process, not the writing process, but he’s laid out in great detail the characters, the movie, the way in, what it’s about, the tone, all of that stuff, right? And I can’t wait. And we’ll wait for him. Hopefully, we’ll get… Look, he does a lot of movies, right? Believe it or not, he can do a couple of movies a year.”
The possibility of seeing a Flash Gordon film shaped by Waititi’s unique vision is a thing to be very excited about and I cannot wait to see what Waititi has in store for audiences with this new film.
Source: MovieWeb
