Universal and The Weinstein Brothers are teaming up to adapt "The Six Million Dollar Man," the TV series that followed Steve Austin (Lee Majors) as a test pilot who suffers a horrific accident, only to be rebuilt (we have the technology!) into a part-man, part-machine, government secret agent.
The new version, again based on the Martin Caidin novel "Cyborg," will be entitled "The Six Billion Dollar Man," and Bryan Singer is apparently attached to direct. Latino Review also says that the writers of "Jack the Giant Killer" are likely to pen a new screenplay, but with four separate writers listed on that film, it's not clear who among Christopher McQuarrie, Darren Lemke, Dan Studney and Mark Bomback they mean. Furthermore, the film may have already found its lead. The site also reports that Leonardo DiCaprio is being courted by both Singer and Harvey Weinstein to take up the lead role of Steve Austin. The actor doesn't have anything solid lined up after "Django Unchained," but it would be an out-of-character move for him to take the film. Since blowing up with "Titanic," he's favored working on serious projects with auteur types like Martin Scorsese, Baz Luhrmann, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, and we're not sure if Singer qualifies in that category anymore, even without a silly franchise property as the potential project. But maybe Singer has a take that will intrigue the star. It's worth noting firstly, that this is all still in the rumor stage at this point, although Latino Review do have a pretty good track record in this department. But secondly, there's a long history of trying to make a "Six Million Dollar Man" movie. The Weinsteins have held the rights for eleven years, and a number of names, normally comedically-inclined, have come and gone on the project, including The Farrelly Brothers, Kevin Smith (who released a comic book, "The Bionic Man," based on his unmade script this year), and Todd Phillips, who came close to making a version with Jim Carrey in the lead. This sounds like a more serious take on the material, although an unofficial parody, "The $40,000 Man," from "Horrible Bosses" writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, is still in development over at New Line. Whether Singer has any more luck than his predecessors remains to be seen...
Au moins, ce sera pas une comédie. Enfin j'espère. Maintenant, est-ce que ça s'impose? J'imagine bien une adaptation dans un style "super-héros" mais Singer en a déjà fait 3 quoi...
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