Brett Ratner In Talks To Direct Hercules
I think quite a few people will be able to get behind this news because, frankly, any timeBrett Ratneris attached to a film that you might not care much about in the first place, it’s like dodging a bullet. Ratner could have directedThe Hobbit(yeah, right) but instead he’s in talks to direct a new take on the tale ofHercules.
TheLA Timessays that Millennium/Nu Image is putting together a film based on Hercules (or Heracles, in the Greek telling) and that after three years of development at the studio Ratner is in talks to direct. That’s the same outfit behindConan, which Ratner was also once attached to. (Marcus Nispel is directingConannow.)
Hercules has hit screens many, many times in a variety of guises, though his appearances are often drenched in cheese. I won’t even pretend to have seen most of the dozens of film incarnations, but I’ve seen a few and can’t think of one that stands out as the definitive telling of the story. (Please chime in with a comment if there is one key version, especially a non-US take.) For many, Disney’s version from 1997 probably stands as the key version. That film changed around many details from the core original stories, but Hercules has long been a character whose tale is more subject to bending and twisting than most. Many movies just settle for having a mythological strong guy called Hercules, without bothering to really deal with the underpinnings of the tale.
Will the film try to conform to something like the Jerry Bruckheimer period action epic template, or be a more serious sandal actionera lathe newConan? At this point we don’t know, though Ratner’s sensibilities are probably better suited toward the former. Regardless, it’ll come back to the same question Conan faced: who do you cast?
