by Brendon Connelly, Source: Bleeding Cool.com
I think it will be a very long time until we ever get a movie called The Six Million Dollar Man, emphasis on the Million, because that number just doesn’t seem high or low enough to merit any sort of reaction, not like it would have when the TV series screened in the 70s.
There’s a comedy script called The 40 Thousand Dollar Man doing the rounds, and if that goes unmade for long enough, inflation could see that retitled as Six Million. For now, though, any attempt to adapt the show for a modern audience will require inflation.
So that’s why Latino Review are reporting on The Six Billion Dollar Man.
According to their spy-gleaned rumours, Bryan Singer is in the frame to direct the film for the Weinsteins and Universal, and he’s had meetings with Leonardo DiCaprio to take the lead role. DiCaprio doesn’t quite fit – surely the doctors rebuilding him would have at least put his face in proportion to his head and not left it stranded, all tiny in the middle there.
Apparently, the film is to be a re-adaptation of Cyborg, the 1972 novel by Martin Caidin that gave rise to the original Man TV movie and subsequent series. Latino Review say that the script will be by “the guys” who wrote Jack the Giant Killer for Singer – which, I assume, means sone or all of Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback and Dan Studney.
If this is all correct, it would mean Singer has lined up two sci-fi projects with their roots in the 70s, with Battlestar Galactica also shaping up at the moment. This taste is not without precedent, however, as he spent some time developing Logan’s Run too, and was the man who rooted his Superman movie pretty firmly in the style and tone of the Donnerverse.
I’m a big fan of Singer’s and, frankly, he can adapt anything he wants and I’ll still be keen. DiCaprio however… not so much. Here’s hoping Brian takes a few more meetings.
Paging Michael Fassbender…
