Breck Eisner directs Creature from Black Lagoon remake

[Raph's Girl]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051020/film_nm/creature_dc

"Creature From the Black Lagoon" will surface again, this time with Breck Eisner at the helm for Universal Pictures.

Part of Universal's rich legacy of black-and-white monster movies, the original "Lagoon" followed a scientific expedition searching for fossils in the Amazon that discovers a prehistoric creature able to breathe underwater. The creature, named Gill-Man, terrorizes the group and falls in love with the fiance of a member of the expedition. The studio began developing updates of its creature features after the success of 1999's "The Mummy."

Gary Ross, whose father, Arthur Ross, was a writer on the 1954 original, is producing the remake via his Larger Than Life banner. Ross -- writer-director of "Seabiscuit" and "Pleasantville" -- wrote the current draft of the "Creature" screenplay. Tedi Safarian also wrote a draft.

Eisner, son of longtime Disney CEO Michael Eisner, met Ross at a dinner party thrown by
William H. Macy. After some conversations, Ross sent Eisner the script to "Lagoon," and he wanted in.

"I've always been a fan of the original, but for this I would love to just update and modernize the film," Eisner said in an interview. "We see it as an aggressive sci-fi horror film in the vein of 'Alien' or like
John Carpenter's 'The Thing.' We want to elevate the source material."

The studio will use a combination of CGI and practical effects for the monster. Design of the creature is under way.

Universal plans on a summer shoot in the U.S. as well as Central or South America.

Eisner made his feature film directorial debut this year with Paramount's "Sahara."

Raph's Girl note: Breck...um..perhaps you should stick to Dirk Pitt films...you did real good on "Sahara"..so er yea...just stick to those... Oh and stop admiting that your father is Michael Eisner...that alone drops your brownie points some...