Pearl Harbor

News for January-March, 2000:

27 March, 2000

The Corpus Christi Caller Times is reporting that the producers of the movie are scouting the USS Lexington for possible filming. The retired ship is stationed there. Sandi McNorton, the marketing director for the Lexington, confirmed that the ship is being considered for filming and that a decision should be made soon. "I don't think it's a tough decision," he said. "Everything is just budgetary. It seems to me it's going to happen, but it will be a matter of how." The ship would serve as the set of the USS Hornet. The Hornet was the launching pad for the Doolittle Raid, America's counterstrike against Japan following the attack on the Pearl Harbor base. The raid featured the launching of a fully laden B-25 bomber being launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier, the first time a land based bomber had accomplished such a feat.

Rocco Montesano, executive director of the Lexington, says that the film has the full support of the Navy. "The goal of this movie is to present a realistic account of not only Pearl Harbor, but the people and events that surrounded it," Montesano said. "Anytime the Navy gives approval to utilize a naval asset, it has the best interests of the Navy in mind." He also says that the Navy has agreed to have an active carrier, the USS Constellation, serve as the set for the actual takeoff and landing of the B-25s for the movie. The Lexington would be used for the bridge, flight deck and ready rooms. It could also serve as one of the Japanese carriers as well. It did this once before for the movie, Midway.

Filming would probably take place in late July and continue for 8 to 11 days. The biggest problem is that this is right in the middle of peak tourist season for the ship. "We're looking at how that would affect out summer business," Montesano said. "The funny thing is, some people say that we are selling out to make a buck, but we may not be able to afford to do this."

24 March, 2000

Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) is the latest addition to the cast. He will play an gruff airplane mechanic. His character is in charge of maintaining planes at the Pearl Harbor base. He factors in heavily, helping the pilots during the surprise attack by the Japanese forces.

Production is scheduled to begin on April 8. Shooting will take place in Hawaii, Texas and Los Angeles lasting four to six months.

15 March, 2000

Michael Bay has finally settled on the female lead for the movie. It will be British actress Kate Beckinsale. Her previous films have included Brokedown Palace, Last Days of Disco and Much Ado About Nothing.

In other casting news, Alec Baldwin is considering taking a role. He would play Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle, who was led the air raid on Japan after Pearl Harbor was bombed and was later awarded with the Congressional Medal Of Honor.

Ben Affleck talked a bit about the movie on his website. What does he think of the project? "I haven't been this excited to do a movie in a long time and nobody is as suprised as I am at that. If you had asked me a year ago if I'd be doing Michael Bay's next movie--and FOR NO MONEY at that--I'd have said you were crazy. And maybe I am, but I don't think so."

Regarding the part of the movie that actually deals with the attack on Pearl Harbor he says, "The movie will capture, using the most advanced special effects, and reproduce the exact events of that terrible day. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that Michael's emormous visual storytelling talents will bring the attack sequence a sense of horrifying realism and terrible majesty."

13 March, 2000

Josh Hartnett (The Faculty) has joined the cast. He will be playing the one of the two male leads with Ben Affleck playing the other. The part of the nurse they both fall in love with is still uncast. James King and Lisa Faulkner have been mentioned as possible candidates.

8 March, 2000

The Air Museum Planes of Fame has some details on the movie. One of their planes is going to be used for the movie. This is their description of the plane and the work that went into it. Below that are some shots of the actual plane.

The TORA TORA Val is currently being rebuilt for use in this upcoming movie. The Val was originally a Convair BT-15 that was sold to the civilian market in the 40's. It was modified to be a Japanese Val for the 1969 movie TORA TORA TORA. The modification consisted of an extra 3 feet of fuselage added between the rear cockpit and the fuselage, a large fiberglass dorsal fin, raised sides of the fuselage and lower canopies. The modifications also incorporated a Pratt and Whitney R-1340 and large fiberglass wheel pants. After the movie was completed the Val was sold to the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

Planes of Fame collected the Val in 1973. The Val has been in storage ever since. Just last month, Disney contracted with us to use this aircraft in the upcoming movie. We will have it finished in six more weeks. The Val, a Zero, P-40 and B-25 of ours, along with five of the Confederate Air Force’s TORA TORA Vals and Kates, two Zero's from the Santa Monica Museum of Flying, Bob Pond's P-40 and John Paul's two P-40's, will make up the fleet for the location filming at Pear Harbor in April 2000. After Hawaii, the movie will take move to the USS Lexington, which will double as a Japanese carrier, then it will become the WASP for the Doolittle portion of the story.

7 March, 2000

The first major signing has been made for Michael Bay's big budget telling of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ben Affleck has signed on for one of the two male leads. He will be playing a fighter pilot in the war. The two male leads will play brothers who both fall for the same woman. British actress Lisa Faulkner has been mentioned as a possibility for the female lead.

Affleck will not be paid up front for his work. Instead his contract pays him based on the movie's success. It's a bit of a gamble but Bay's movies are generally healthy performers at the box office.

29 February, 2000

Now that Harrison Ford has bailed out on a role in Traffic, director Steven Soderbergh needs someone to take over. Reportedly Kevin Costner is interested. He passed on a role in Pearl Harbor, so he has a bit of free time in his schedule for it.

22 February, 2000

Michael Bay is searching for a leading lady for his new mega-budget war movie, Pearl Harbor. Gwyneth Paltrow had been mentioned earlier as a possibility. It now seems that Bay may be looking for a lesser known actress to take the role. British soap star Lisa Faulkner has apparently been in talks with Bay over the role.

The role is that of a nurse who falls in love with one of the two main stars. She works at the Pearl Harbor base at the time of the attack. It may seem a little odd that such a major role could go to such an unknown. Bay has made it clear though that any established actors who want to be in the movie will have to accept a much smaller salary than they are used to. Suddenly an unknown doesn't sound so far off base after all.

February 15, 2000

Charlize Theron won't be appearing Disney's mega-budget Pearl Harbor, despite rumors to the contrary. She decided to pass on it in favor of starring opposite Keanu Reeves in a remake of the romantic drama Sweet November which shoots at the same time as Pearl Harbor. "'Whomever is in it [Harbor] will probably become a huge star and the movie will do extremely well," says Theron. "But I know I'm here [in my career] because I've always made decisions based on what felt right to me and what felt challenging to me." Her decision wasn't about the money though. "I made my decision based on the character in Sweet November."

6 January, 2000

The script review of Pearl Harbor was apparently based on a very early rough draft. Bay Films contacted Dark Horizons to state that that draft was actually taken from Randall Wallace's computer by an assistant and has been floating around for a little while. The assistant in question has been fired. The script in question "represents just a few weeks of work on Randall Wallace's part. The 142-page version is five months old. The current draft of the script - which remains top-secret and is still being tinkered with - is substantially different - shorter, clearer, cleaner, and better." Hopefully they've taken care of the problems stated in the review. To me it sounds as if the movie has a lot of potential if handled properly. I'd love to be able to cover this under Movie News instead.

4 January, 2000

Michael Bay's next project is a recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor. As always he is joined by producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The movie has been greenlit by Universal with a starting budget of $145 million. That figure is not a typo. It is the highest starting budget ever for a movie. Coincidently the previous record was also held by Bay/Bruckheimer for Armaggedon.

Randall Wallace (Braveheart) wrote the screenplay for the film. It is essentially a love story set around the events leading up to Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. Stax managed to get a hold of what is presumably the first draft of the script. He felt that the action sequences describing the bombing and other combat was spectacular and well written. However the romance felt wooden and cliched and the main characters are awfully thin.

Mr. Wallace wants to have two different and equally moving stories transpiring simultaneously but he doesn't achieve that lofty goal in this sloppy draft. He wants to make PEARL HARBOR both an epic war movie for guys and a gushy romance for women (if that's what HE presumes they really want to see). The romantic melodrama set against the backdrop of war is one of Hollywood's oldest and most sure-fire formulas. It has worked for films ranging from CASABLANCA to THE ENGLISH PATIENT, many of which are multiple Oscar winners. It was even the formula Wallace employed on his Best Picture-winning BRAVEHEART. PEARL HARBOR also utilizes this well-worn formula but it just reads like a poor remake of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, a film PEARL HARBOR has many obvious similarities to. What all those aforementioned Oscar-winning war films had that PEARL HARBOR currently lacks were much more dynamic and emotionally involving screen stories, often rewritten multiple times by several different writers. Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer would be prudent to hire Steven Zaillian or Paul Attanasio or John Logan to completely overhaul Mr. Wallace's screenplay. Perhaps they could give this story some brains and heart to match its already overwhelming pyrotechnic display. Mr. Bruckheimer, Mr. Bay, and Universal should take their time and make PEARL HARBOR just right if they want it to become a classic war film. There is simply no need to rush into filming it (so call off the second unit until you have a better story to work with). There is a great idea here beneath all the mess; the filmmakers need to latch onto that and keep developing it. PEARL HARBOR could be a great film if done right but that historic tragedy deserves far better treatment than it received here.

To read the review in its entirety, head here.

26 January, 2000

Michael Eisner gets his hands dirty

On Monday Robert A. Iger was promoted from the position of ABC Group chairman to president and COO of Disney. This should free up considerable time for CEO Michael Eisner. Unlike CEO Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Case of AOL, Eisner won't be using his free time to concentrate on the big picture. Instead he will actually spend more time micromanaging Disney.

Generally speaking increased intervention from executives in the movie making process is a bad thing. It tends to dilute the director's vision and forces potentially bad ideas into a project. With studio chief Joe Roth gone, it would seem that there is little to keep Eisner from poking his nose into more movies. He has made it clear that he has already gone so far as to read and mark up scripts. Roth had managed to keep Disney's movie studio somewhat independent of the big company by deliberately keeping Eisner at arm's length. New studio head Peter Schneider however is close with Eisner. In Schneider's days running Disney animation he made a habit of showing their work to Eisner from the earliest stages. It wasn't unknown for Schneider to solicit and accept Eisner's inpot on story points and other parts of the animated movies.

Eisner is determined to coral the spiraling costs of movie making. Last year's The Insider and Bicentennial Man were fairly unsuccessful at the box office, hurting Disney's earnings. He has now set his sights on Pearl Harbor, Michael Bay's new project. Originally budgeted for $145 million, Eisner is keen to get that figure down dramatically. He has mentioned some examples of his ideas. "The script says, 'Exterior train station, dawn. Danny walks to one of the three revolving doors back into the station. He takes the one on the far right. As he passes through, he doesn't see Evelyn rushing through the door.' So it's a train station; it's 1939. So I just said here in my note, 'Hey, why not a bus station?' It will cost several million dollars less to film." It has also been reported that director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have radically slashed fees to bring the budget figure down to $130 million.

Is that necessarily hurtful to the script? Probably not. The concern however is that this kind of intervention can spread and infect all facets of the movie. Pearl Harbor is an ambitious project that could pay off handsomely if done well. It would be a shame to see it nitpicked to death. It's clear that with the shifts in power within Disney that Eisner will now find it easier to get involved in whatever he wants. It is a big company so hopefully he won't direct too much of that attention the movie studio. That probably won't happen though. Movies are a large portion of the Disney pie and easily one of the most high profile. It will be hard for him to resist tinkering which could prove detrimental to any number of projects.