I love to blog. I love to let you all know what’s up in my world and how the movie making business is going. This is a difficult stage for a lot of my projects: if I told you everything that was happening day-to-day, I’d get a lot of people mad at me. This is the “behind the scenes” part of moving projects along that people don’t talk about until deals are done and the trailer is running in theaters. So on one hand, I feel this people-pleasing urge to gush about some stuff, but know that it will cause harm (and a smackdown) if I share too much.
Okay, I’ll spill the beans. Zac Efron is playing Gobo. There! I said it. That feels so good.
Alright! Real information! I will speak in code and say as much as I can. But if I “disappear” after this, you’ll know corporate goons have yanked me off the street and shoved me in an abandoned airplane hangar somewhere (I always love how in the movies, when someone is nabbed by goons, instead of being tied up in a hotel room, it’s always in some kickass art directed airplane hangar or steel mill with some huge neon sign outside one window.
Where would we be without Michael Bay?*).
The certain studio that has just released a movie about killing Nazis is now very happy, since said movie totally “scalped” at the box office (sorry). And while said studio is interested in moving ahead on Fraggle Rock, they have also been entertaining interest from other parties who want to come aboard to co-finance. These other parties are entities that make big, big movies. These parties would not only give me the budget I need to make this picture, but would market the poop out of it. Armed with some pretty tasty production art (so cool, I wish I could show you) and storyboards, I have had some great meetings with these entities and will continue to meet with more. We are on the CUSP, people. I know this boy has cried wolf for months, but it’s true. The cusp!!
And I apologize to the few Fraggle fans who just get pissed off by these empty reports with no identifiable progress. But the progress is real. It’s just very hard to put into words why this takes so long and to describe all of the hoops I’ve had to jump through to move towards production.
What else… I’ve got my dream lead actor saying he is IN. That’s good. I’ve got a major music talent saying that they want to write songs. I’ve cut three storyboard sequences to temp dialogue and music. I’ve tweaked the script again to make it tighter and more emotional and just turned that in to the aforementioned Nazi-scalping studio. Still very excited about the script and what you guys will think of it.
And the other reason that it’s been hard to blog a lot is that I am awaiting the birth of my second child. And he’s coming like, any second now. To say that event has preoccupied my life a lot would be an understatement. I usually keep the personal stuff out of this blog, but that’s my whole world right now! Baby comin’!!
Good grief, I didn’t even have time to post my SAN DIEGO COMIC CON wrap-up blog this year. I go every year, and always have fun. This year was a little lean on the industry shmooze for me, but I did enjoy the Henson Publishing panel (Fraggle Rock comics, coming soon) and spoke with Brian Henson for a moment after the Farscape panel. What a cheery, positive guy that is. You’d think he grew up around puppets or something.
And then I have to say that DISTRICT 9 ROCKS. It has its critics, but man, I thought it was fan-ding-dong-tastic. Loved it. Blew my mind and my ideas of what sci-fi can be. Go Wikus!
Before I close out, can I just kiss some fan butt for a moment? You Fraggle/Muppet fans are awesome. You’re opinionated, you’re passionate, but you respect what I’m trying to do. You’ve been so positive over these months with encouragement as you voice concerns and excitement for what is to come. And it is coming. (Sing it with me) Every morning, every day… every evening, calling me away…
Stay Fraggley. Peace out.
*We’d be watching better movies, that’s where we’d be. Hey Mike, can you “Transform” my movie ticket into a refund?
