Hey folks, Harry here. This week it was announced that Stephen Norrington was attached to direct the Jennifer Lopez project, TICK TOCK, a film about an FBI agent that has to help an amnesiac, who is told he's the prime suspect in a series of bomb planted in Shopping Malls around Los Angeles.... presumably before they go off. Well, given the start date on this film was the Fall... and knowing that Norrington was set to start shooting this Fall on GHOST RIDER and that he had just announced this HAMMER OF GOD project at Dreamworks... Well... I was concerned that perhaps we might be losing GHOST RIDER in lieu of TICK TOCK (which had once been a Danny Boyle project). So I wrote Norrington off a letter to see if we could get the nitty gritty of what is going on regarding the three projects. Here's what I got back....

Hey, Harry,

Yes, I'm going to do "Tick Tock" first. As for "Ghost Rider" - it has the potential to be the best Marvel movie yet, particularly with Nic Cage starring, but it's not moving forward as fast as we anticipated, and we need loads of prep time - more than we had realised. It's a project that's extremely technically complex, one that will stand and fall by the quality of it's visuals, so there's no point pulling the trigger before we're completely R+D'd and prepped.

Regarding "Hammer of God", Stephen Chin is taking a vaction as we speak, and when he returns we will dive into it headfirst. It's going to be historically accurate, as far as possible, within the parameters of making it FUN and an action adventure. We've been watching loads of Chinese flicks - "The Shao Lin Temple" with Jet Li is my jumping-off point. And we're planning to discover some "new" (read: big stars in China, no one's ever heard of them in the US) Chinese action stars to share the screen alongside the western lead.

Best,

Norrington

So it looks like the FX people need more time to work on their Computer Pyro FX, and frankly, I'd rather them get it right than rush and get it wrong. It's also nice to hear that HAMMER OF GOD is going to take some of the history into context, but not be overly hindered by it to keep us from seeing a fun action adventure. So there ya go folks....