Papa Vinyard here, now here's a little somethin' for ya...
Now that GRAVITY and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS have proven that there's a market for intense thrillers that focus on only one or two characters, we're hearing about a similarly-structured project in the works for none other than Dwayne "do you smell what The Rock is cookin'" Johnson. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Johnson is going to star in SAN ANDREAS for his JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND director Brad Peyton. Unfortunately, the film has nothing to do with the GTA series (pity.); the project, conceived and produced by Beau Flynn (the JOURNEY films, HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS), has the former wrestler as a Californian father who's at ground zero when "the big one" (the long-awaited ESCAPE FROM L.A. earthquake that will submerge the Golden State) finally hits, and has to save his daughter from the destruction. Shades of 2012 and VOLCANO on this one…
New Line hopes to get this one going by April, and is eyeballing a release date sometime in 2015. If I were them, I'd be angling to roll this out in March or April, BATTLE: LOS ANGELES-style, giving people some large-scale spectacle before the heavy hitters of that summer (AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, STAR WARS, JURASSIC WORLD, etc.) clutter up the box-office landscape.
I guess a lot depends on whether Peyton has the disaster-movie chops of Emmerich and Bay, and on the caliber of actor they get to back up Mr. Johnson. If they bring back that '70s-era all-star line-up disaster-movie trend, I know that I (and some of the other AICN staff) would not be too resistant to that resurgence.
SAN ANDREAS faults sometime in 2015.
-Vincent Zahedi
”Papa Vinyard”
vincentzahedi@gmail.com
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