Dan Laustsen - Adventurer
News update, May 4th, 2002:
Dan Laustsen has been offered the job of filming The Adventurer by Christophe Gans.
Nothing has been confirmed by Dan Laustsen - but I certainly hope it's true!
On IMDB Gary B. Kibbe is listed as DP ....... but until I hear definitely that Dan is NOT filming it, I'll keep updating this page
Now it's just a question of timing - will DL finish "League of Extraordinaary Gentlemen" in time to start "The Adventurer"?
LoEG is scheduled to last until November 2002, and Adventurer is scheduled to start filming in February 2002, so it looks do-able so far.
The Adventurer shoot is going to be "tough", and it looks like filming will now take place in China.
Vincent Cassel has resigned from The Adventurer, and the 13th street website has closed down.
8 November:
Adventurer filming has been put back, and is now supposed to start July 2003
News
In an interview over the phone with 13th Street (who btw is doing a very nice coverage of Brotherhood of the Wolf in connection with the US premiere January 11th, 2002), Christophe Gans said that several of the BOTW crew would rejoin him for his new movie, The Adventurer. He then mentioned Dan Laustsen as D.P. , Philip Kwok for the fights and David Wu and Sebastian Prangere as editors. For the characters, Vincent Cassel has already been hired to play the lead, and Mark Dacascos for an important role as a yet unnamed blind fighter. Rumors are also that Michael Rooker will play Bob Morane's sidekick, Bill Ballantine.
Morane and Ballantine.
Cassel and Rooker
The filming starts autumn 2002 and will take place in Thailand, London and Paris. The budget is $30.000.000 - one million more than Brotherhood of the Wolf ended up costing (it was originally budgeted at $20 millions).
Good news for the international fans - the movie will be shot in English!
Vincent Cassel's English is so good that he usually dubs his French movies into English himself. The movie website will probably alse be good for repeated visits with filmclips, wallpapers, screensavers and loads of info - like the French "Brotherhood of the Wolf" website was.
The novels of Bob Morane were written by Henry Vernes.
From the official Bob Morane website.
The first novel featuring Bob Morane appeared in 1953, La Valleé Infernale, and the most recent one, Le Dernier Massaï i 2001. In 1956, eigth new Bob Morane novels were published! Recently, there has been "only" 1-3 books a year ........
The film will be based on "L'Ombre Jaune" (The Yellow Shadow) - number 35 in the row of the 183 Bob Morane novels Henri Vernes (not related to Jules V.) has written until now.
The official Morane site has had polls to find the actors they would like for the roles, and for the role of Bob, Christophe Lambert won with 5 votes to Vincent Cassel's 3.
As Bill Ballantine, Arnold Schwarzeneggger leads with 8 votes.
As Sophia Paramount, Nicole Kidman leads with 6 votes.
But Mark Dacascos and Gerard Depardieu both have 2 votes to play mr. Ming aka The Yellow Shadow.
I have a little trouble seeing Depardieu as a menacing Asian ........
Bob Morane has been filmed before - in 1960 with Jaques Santi som Bob, and as a tv series in 1963, 26 episodes with Claude Titre as Bob and Billy Kearns as Bill Ballantine.
Who exactly is Bob Morane?
Bob is the main character in the novels. He's a retired French air force major and World War II hero, now a roving reporter and champion of justice. He fights drug trafficking, terrorism, industrial espionage, secret societies and organized crime. His arch-enemies are mr. Ming aka the Yellow Shadow, the dangerous but seductive miss Ylang Ylang and the diabolic dr. Xhatan. With the help of his friend Bill Ballantine, a tough burly Scotsman and Sophia Paramount, and his own courage and sheer determination, Bob ensures that noble causes win.
The stories sometimes are science fiction, and for Bob Morane, space and time have no limits.
The Story - not very detailed
The story will take place in the late 1950s during the final days of the British colonisation of Burma (now Myanmar), and it will depict the first clash between Morane and the Yellow Shadow. Bob will be fighting against a Chinese secret society that uses witchcraft.
Gans is eager to include black magic and buddist mythology into the story, and the fights are going to be magic kung fu.
Behind the camera
Christophe Gans, director.
Philip Kwok, fight choreographer.
Dan Laustsen, director of photography.
Premiere
Sometime in 2003 - Universal has already bought the movie rights for distribution.
The Actors
Bob Morane - Vincent Cassel
Cassel has recently been seen as Jean-Francois de Morangias in Brotherhood of the Wolf, and he was also the co-lead with Jean Reno in Crimson Rivers.
Cassel lived in New York years ago to study acting, and worked among other things as a bike messenger. He delivered stuff to a newspaper - now the same newspaper is interviewing him!
Official Vincent Cassel website - in French
The Vincent Cassel Fansite - in English.
Vincent Cassel - in French. Nothing much there.
Bill Ballantine, Bobs friend - Michael Rooker?
Known from a.o. JFK, Replacement Killers, Henry and Replicants.
Sophia Paramount - ?
Blind fighter - Mark Dacascos
According to rumors, Gans has again created a role for Dacascos - a character not seen in the books. I hope the Morane fans won't mind too much?
Personally, I can't get enough movies made by Gans, photographed by Laustsen, starring Dacascos.
He was the lead in Gans' first full length movie, Crying Freeman. He's also been in a bunch of action movies and played the lead in the tv series "Crow: Stairway to Heaven".
Official Mark Dacascos website
American fansite
German fansite in German
Danish fansite in English
The Yellow Shadow - ?
Only two names were listed in the polls on the official Morane website:
Gérard Depardieu and Mark Dacascos - talks about different types .....
Can you see Depardieu as an Asian menace? What about Cary-Hiroyoki Tagawa?
Cover for the book where Morane first meets the Yellow Shadow
The Director
Christophe Gans is a movie fanatic, and after finishing his studies, he and a handful of friends started their own movie magazine, Starfix. Gans was editor in chief from 1983 to 1986, and continued to contribute to the magazine after 1986.
In 1993 he made a third of the movie Necronomicon - the section called "The Drowned" - and in 1995 he made his first full length movie, the cult favorite Crying Freeman, followed by Brotherhood of the Wolf in 2001.
Between CF and Brotherhood, he had spent a long time working on a movie about the young Captain Nemo, but as he could not reach an agreement with the money men over who to star in the movie , the project fizzled out. When CanalPlus offered him the script for Brotherhood, he accepted at once.
Stephane Cabel had written the script and Gans rewrote to include the character of Mani - the only completely fictitious character in the movie.
Gans and Cabel have worked together again and written the script for The Adventurer - Gans is a long-time fan of the novels. Here also, Gans has written in a role for Dacascos which is not in the original story. Gans has said that Mark Daascos is his "acteur fetishiste" - his favorite actor, because he embodies Gans' vision of his own movies - mysterious, elegant, Asian, dreamlike, "plastique".
Gans himself practices kung fu, karate and boxing, and together with Dacascos, he choreographed the fight scenes for Crying Freeman.
He loves Hong Kong movies and DVD and publishes HK movies himself. Exactly what his position is in the company SevenSept I don't know, but the company publishes several magazines about HK movies and DVDs (Kumite, DVDScoop, CinéDVD and DVDVision). SevenSept refers to the seveneth art form - movies.
An article in the French Premiere magazine # 292, May-June 2001, lists him as #26 on the powerlist of the French movie industry.
L'ex-annonce du film au Danemark
Modérateur : La Patrouille du Temps
L'ex-annonce du film au Danemark
Nos amis danois s'intéressaient au film.
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Parazythum
- Modérateur
- Messages : 1502
- Inscription : 13 déc. 2002 à 21:23
Ce qui est marrant, c'est qu'ils sont allés chercher cette info sur le site de Dom, alors que ce n'était qu'une sorte de "référendum" par les fans !!! S'ils ne parlent pas bien le français ils n'y auront vu que du feu, croyant que c'étaient des infos de source sûre.
Parazythum.
Don't Bug Me !
Auteur et webmaster du Grenier de Bob Morane http://parazythum.free.fr/grenier
Don't Bug Me !
Auteur et webmaster du Grenier de Bob Morane http://parazythum.free.fr/grenier
Un article supplémentaire:
http://www.carlsen.dk/comics/avisforside.asp?ID=530Christophe Gans er også involveret i planerne om filmatisering af en anden god gammel tegneserieklassiker fra det franske sprogområde, Bob Morane (eller Bob Moran, som vi kalder ham i Danmark). I første omgang satte den meget omtalte SARS-epidemi i Asien en stopper for forberedelserne til Bob Morane-filmen, L’Aventurier, som var berammet til at skulle indspilles i Sydøstasien. Nu, hvor SARS-epidemien til dels er under kontrol, er der ved at komme liv i filmplanerne igen. Indspilningen af Bob Morane-filmen kan dog tidligst starte i 2004, så der er stadig lang vej, inden den rammer de europæiske biografer. Det er ingen ringere end den anerkendte danske filmfotograf Dan Lausten, der skal være cheffotograf på filmen.
