As director Gareth Edwards is prepping for a March shooting date for his Godzilla film, Legendary Pictures has hired Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead, Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, The Green Mile) to re-write the script that was originally written by The Seventh Son scribe Max Borenstein. I think it's safe to say that the addition of Darabont on this project is freakin' awesome! But, there's some more drama going on behind the scenes.
Deadline reports that Legendary wants to get rid of producers Dan Lin and Roy Lee. They originally helped with putting the rights deal together for the production company, and they are fighting back. According to the report, "Lin and Lee refused to reduce the fees they signed on for when the original deal was made. Legendary brass feels it has the latitude to get rid of them, and is doing just that, exercising a pay or play clause and paying them upfront money to go away, with no back-end or credit on the film. The potential back-end on a global franchise is where the big bucks are."
Damn, I wonder what they did to piss off the studio enough to want get rid of them. Lin has been a producer for Warner Bros. for 15 years, so all I can think of is he really pissed someone off.
As for Darabont being hired to work on the script, I'm a little surprised that he's actually working with them on it. But, it's only going to make whatever they have better. Darabont is an amazing storyteller, and now I'm even more excited to see Godzilla back up on the big screen!
What do you think of Darabont jumping on board the film production?