The Invasion

[MacGuffin]

Invaders Are Just Visiting
New name for Kidman sci-fi flick.

It started as a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but somewhere along the line, someone persuaded the folks at Warner Brothers to drop the campy "body snatchers" bit. And now, Invasion is being christened yet again: The Visiting is its new moniker – clearly de-emphasizing the aliens' hostile intentions while also avoiding confusion with the new ABC television series.

A press conference is being held this week to announce the start of production and get the film's new name some media attention. The story, which is still based roughly on the old 1956 Body Snatchers film, stars Nicole Kidman as a Washington psychiatrist who stumbles onto an alien epidemic that alters human behaviour. As she investigates further, she comes to realize that her son might be the key to stopping an alien invasion.

The Visiting also stars Daniel Craig (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) and Jeremy Northam (The Singing Detective). Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment) is directing the film. No release date has been set yet.

[modage]

getting warmer.  if they change like 3 more details they can call it 'original'.

[polkablues]

Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment) is directing the film.

...the only light at the end of this particular tunnel.

[MacGuffin]

THE WACHOWSKIS INVADE THE INVASION
Source: CHUD

Oliver Hirschbiegel was a pretty hot commodity in Hollywood coming off his one-two punch German films Das Experiment and Downfall, and Warner Bros snatched him up for their film The Invasion, an updated version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Produced by Joel Silver, the scifi film stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and I was pretty excited about it.

Then the film seemed to drop off the radar a bit. When I spoke to Daniel Craig at the Casino Royale junket, he mentioned that it was coming out, but didn't say too much else about it. Was he avoiding the subject?

And could it be that the film dropped off the radar because Joel Silver and Warner Bros are unhappy with it? That seems to be the case, as gossip rag website TMZ is reporting that the Wachowski Siblings are being brought in to rewrite the film's ending to make it more exciting. An "insider" tells the site: 'This is normal. It's a thriller, and occasionally, a studio will want it to make it, you know, actually thrilling.'

Yikes.

I don't know who will be shooting this new ending – I have to imagine that Silver turned to the Wachowskis to rewrite the finale because he wasn't getting anywhere with Hirschbiegel, who was probably stubbornly standing up for "art" and his "vision" of the movie. Those foreigners!

Bringing in new writers to punch a script up isn't all that unusual, of course. What makes this difference is that, as far as I know, The Invasion is finished. And of course going back for reshoots isn't that unusual either, but Silver bringing in such high profile people – and people so very, very loyal to him – seems to hint at problems inside the production. I wonder if Hirschbiegel will even do press for this film...

[Pubrick]

Hirschbiegel, who was probably stubbornly standing up for "art" and his "vision" of the movie. Those foreigners!

stupid chud, but at least someone is finally calling them siblings. and hirschy should never have agreed to do this anyway.

[MacGuffin]

Looks Like The Wachowskis Are Still Hard At Work on Kidman's 'The Invasion'
Source: Cinematical

As we reported last week, the long-in-production remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was taken away from German director Oliver Hirschbiegel shortly after he delivered his first cut, and turned over to the Wachowski Brothers and V for Vendetta director James McTeigue for a re-working. Warner Brothers was reportedly unhappy with the lack of action in Hirschbiegel's take; seems to me that if you hire a guy whose last project was a three hour biography of Adolph Hitler, you should know what you're getting into, but then I don't run a major studio. The Invasion stars blonde, pale, and icy duo Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, two bodies a lot of people would like to snatch. Invasion of the Body Snatchers has already been remade many times, most successfully in the excellent 1978 take with Donald Sutherland.

So what are the Wachowskis doing to the pic? The latest Hollywood dish on the movie comes from a highly unlikely source: a scientist. David Bolinsky, former lead medical instructor at Yale, has completed a short computer-generated film called The Inner Life of the Cell. It seems everyone wants a piece of that hot white blood cell action, and not just the usual museums and universities. Bolinsky is quoted by Wired as saying, "We got a call from Warner Bros. Pictures. Apparently the Wachowski brothers, the guys who did The Matrix, are doing a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and they had come across our animation and they wanted to know if we'd be interested in re-rendering it at film resolution so it could be included in some way as (part) of the special effects they're planning for the movie. So right now their lawyers are talking with the Harvard lawyers about the possibility of this."

[MacGuffin]

Waging a New Invasion
Kidman, Craig pic gets re-imagined.

The story behind Warners' long-delayed The Invasion is shaping up to be as interesting as whatever tale the filmmakers eventually come up with, a tale which is reportedly still being reworked.

Invasion was directed by German helmer Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) but, according to Collider.com, the reshoots that were recently done will change the film far more substantially than first thought.

Collider claims that "Warner Bros. saw an early rough cut of The Invasion and realized it needed a little work. The director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, was 'unavailable' to work on the planned reshoots, so Warner Bros. and [producer] Joel Silver brought in a pair of writer/directors that they knew they could rely upon, The Wachowski Brothers. It was reported that they came in to shoot a new ending. But I can report that they rewrote over 2/3 of the film, and brought in their trusted colleague, James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), to direct the material while they were busy prepping their own film [Speed Racer]."

The site adds that Warners and Silver now feel they have a more commercially viable product on their hands.

Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in the film, which was previously entitled The Visiting and was once touted as a re-imagining of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[picolas]

fuck.

(in response to the whole thread/development)

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm less sad about this than others. Hirschbiegel had to realize he was going to be making a certain kind of movie when he took on a film of this size with so many stars attached. He had to realize it wasn't going to be an art film unless he considerably reduced the budget. Back in the 60s, Akira Kurosawa was fired from directing Tora! Tora! Tora! because he tried to hire a significant number of amatuer Japanese actors. That film was a good lesson for Kurosawa. He didn't go back to Hollywood.

Paul Schrader's dealings with the his Exorcist prequel was more sad. He tried to keep the budget in check and made a film that (to me) looked good for a lot of studios. It just didn't look good for that studio so he ended up being burnt.

Hirschbiegel's cut will see the light of day sometime and if he's lucky, it will be a martyr case and too many film people will think too much of it because he took on Hollywood head on. Considering he made Downfall, I'm hoping it is a good film. That film was great but the genre of The Invasion sucks for me.

[MacGuffin]

The Invasion
Source: Entertainment Weekly

Here's an interesting factoid for you: When the cameras first started rolling on The Invasion back in September 2005, Daniel Craig hadn't even been cast as James Bond. So to find himself doing press for The Invasion now is ''strange,'' he admits. Still, ''it happens. I've been doing this long enough to take experiences like this in stride. Some films get pushed aside.''

And when they do, it's usually because the production was somehow troubled — a rumor, however unfortunate, now being circulated about The Invasion. Conceived as an updated version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the sci-fi political thriller, in which Craig and Nicole Kidman play doctors who fend off an extraterrestrial attack, sat in the can for 13 months before the cast reassembled in January for reshoots. The goal was to amp up the action and add a twist to the ending — only Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) was no longer calling the shots. He'd been replaced by V for Vendetta director James McTeigue and the Wachowski brothers, which sent tongues wagging that producer Joel Silver had removed the German director for failing to deliver a sufficiently Hollywood movie. True? ''No!'' bellows Silver. ''Of course not. Oliver's wife was in the hospital.'' (It was actually Hirschbiegel's wife's sister, according to his agent.) ''I mean, what can I say?'' Silver asks, sounding annoyed. ''There are reshoots on almost every movie that I've been involved in. The Wachowskis always help us, and James McTeigue shot a couple of days. That's what happened.'' We'll have to take his word for it. Hirschbiegel declined to be interviewed. (Come to think of it, so did Kidman, who suffered minor injuries while filming a car chase for the movie last winter.)

And Craig? He's keeping as cool as 007. ''The only reason to go back and reshoot is to get the film right,'' he says. Let's hope it was worth the effort.

[MacGuffin]

[picolas]

pretty good.

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

[Kal]

Could be fun... but I'm not liking Nicole Kidman very much lately

[A Matter Of Chance]

the wachowski brothers love working in this no emotion thing