For some reason a Lincolnshire newspaper has decided that the Dambusters remake is likely to be postponed, or even cancelled. They have no evidence for this, other than the fact that no one from Peter Jackson’s production company has recently been in touch with a few local enthusiasts. More reliable information comes from scriptwriter Stephen Fry in a Radio 5 interview last week.
Podcast of interview here, talking about the responsibility he feels working on the remake, and revealing something of Guy Gibson’s sensitive side. It’s about 7 minutes in. (Hat tip Aviation Forum.)
Dambusters remake
Now it’s Nigsy
I’m somewhat reluctant to bring you information gleaned from what Alan Partridge once dubbed “arguably the best newspaper in the world” but it would appear that the dog that was once going to be called Nidge is now going to be called Nigsy. Somehow I don’t think this will satisfy some people. Expect further protests along the lines of “it’s all the fault of the PC Brigade”.
Recession? ‘Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit.’
There’s no real way of knowing if you will be working on the Dambusters remake, but if you are a Matte Dept. Supervisor, a Matte Painter, a Senior Water TD, a Shader Writer, an FX TD, a Lighting TD or a Water TD then you might want to consider relocating to downtown Wellington in New Zealand. In the last month, Weta Digital has advertised for people to fill all these jobs. Please don’t ask me what the work entails, as I have no idea. Perhaps the ‘Water TDs” will be involved in producing the new CGI versions of the mines exploding against the dams, which are probably the most laughably amateur bits of the 1955 film.
However, you could just end up working on The Hobbit, Halo or Lucifer, all of which Weta also has in the pipeline.
Dambusters remake: Fry says 2010, we say 2011
UPDATE, 16 August 2014. We were even wronger! Best guess is now 2016 or 2017.
UPDATE, 24 September 2011. We were wrong! Best guess is now 2013 or 2014.
UPDATE, 16 December 2009: Jackson confirms shooting to start in 2010
While he was recently down under in New Zealand, filming a nature programme for the BBC, Stephen Fry gave an interview to the entertainment section of the Wellington newspaper, the Dominion Post. Most of this was about his travelogue, Stephen Fry in America, which was coming up on air down there, but at the end he spoke briefly about his work on the remake of The Dam Busters.
The article is not available on the interwebnet, but I managed to track it down via a library subscription, so I bring it to you here.
Interviewer: Is it true that you have rewritten The Dam Busters?
SF: Yes, well, I won’t say rewritten. The great New Zealand director, Peter Jackson, asked me if I would be interested in writing a screenplay on The Dam Busters. This was fascinating because – I yield to none my admiration to him as a film-maker; he’s astounding – I had no idea he’d be interested in this story.
It turns out, actually, that it was David Frost who had bought the rights to the Paul Brickhill book The Dam Busters and was desperate to find someone to direct it, and he was told by a friend that Peter Jackson had a huge poster of the original film on his wall in his office and David thought, ‘I’ll call him up’, and the deal was struck. Then Peter got in touch with me. Now the original film is a magnificent film – it genuinely is a masterpiece.
Interviewer: And when will we see your version?
SF: 2010.
Dominion Post, Wellington, NZ, 17 February 2009.
The great man says ‘2010’, but I still think he is being optimistic. IMDB Pro has a few people listed as working on pre-production visuals, but no one else, which would indicate that shooting is still some way away.
Dambusters remake: 2011 still most likely date
A New Year turns (and a happy one to all readers of this blog) but there is no word yet on how the remake of The Dam Busters is going. Screenplay writer Stephen Fry is currently in New Zealand, but is working on a BBC nature documentary, rather than the movie. All the industry gossip about Peter Jackson’s current workload is to do with his forthcoming film version of Tintin, to the cast of which Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the latest additions. Christian Rivers who is due, as they say in film circles, to ‘helm’ the Dambusters project is currently working on a film called The Laundry Warrior about an Asian warrior assassin. Where does this leave the remake of Britain’s 11th favourite war movie? As there has been no word at all on a cast, I’m not budging from my prediction that it won’t hit the cinema screens until 2011.
Partly political
Some politicians are as dull as ditchwater, but many have a genuinely wicked sense of humour and love an audience, however small. (I remember an evening in 1990 in a Bradford curry house with a lovely man called Derek Fatchett, a Labour MP who died far too young, who made the three or four of us present laugh so much that my head hurt. I can’t recall a single joke that he told, but it was one of those glorious nights, doubtless fuelled by lager and poppadoms, that you hope won’t end too soon.)
From the other side of the house comes Michael Gove, behind whose overgrown schoolboy looks is a mind which comes up with a stream of witty repartee. In the new, slightly risqué, Tory party he is a rising star, and is therefore allowed to write columns, like this one for The Times, which poke tongue-in-cheek fun at his colleagues. ‘Is your partner Tory enough?’, he wants to know, setting a quiz to find out. In the answer to Question No. 6, he states that if ‘The Dam Busters’ or ‘any film where Jerry gets it in the eye’ is your favourite you are ‘Simply Too Tory for words’ and need to be cossetted with copies of the Salisbury Review and bloater-paste sandwiches.
For some reason, that sentence conjures up to me an image of someone not unlike the sainted Stephen Fry – but he bats for the other team in politics, as well as in his private life. I have no way of knowing the truth, but the great man always sounds as though he wears a smoking jacket in his rare moments of leisure. Last night, he was a guest team captain on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’, next weekend he is going to be driving a taxi around the USA. Has he finished his work on the new Dambusters script is the question to which we all want to know the answer!
Gibbo’s four legged friend
Last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph had a bit of a scoop which probably confirmed the worst suspicions of some Dam Buster film enthusiasts. Sir David Frost, who is producing the new film with Peter Jackson, told the newspaper’s diary writer, Mandrake, that they had reached a compromise on the name of Guy Gibson’s dog. The remake is unlikely to appear before 2011, and it will be called Nidge.
In the course of writing this blog I have spent a lot of time over the last six months reading various bulletin boards and discussion forums. In almost every thread that has been started about the remake of The Dam Busters someone raises the name of the dog within the first ten posts. A range of ‘jobsworths’ and ‘do-gooders’ are cited as being the people who won’t allow the original name to be used, with ‘the PC Brigade’ being the favourite culprit.
Well, if the decision has been made, it’s made. Time for everyone to move on, I think.
Dambusters remake could be held over to 2011
According to a report from New Zealand, filming for Peter Jackson’s long awaited remake of the Dambusters is likely to begin ‘early next year’, i.e. 2009. This is a quote from a ‘spokesman’ for Jackson, which is in slight contradiction to what the maestro himself has said earlier, that shooting is still possible ‘this year’.
Plans for Jackson’s $40US million movie about the the famous assault were announced in September 2006. Jackson, who is producing the Christian Rivers-directed film, has said shooting was possible this year.
British actor and writer Stephen Fry had written the script, a remake of the 1955 film The Dam Busters, but the cast still had to be announced.
A later report in the same paper says that the producer is exercising his ‘trademark eye for detail’ by employing an astronomer to advise how the moon was positioned on the night in question. There was a full moon that night, and its light was used to give the attacking Lancasters a better view of their targets. (There was some criticism of this at the time, notably from David Maltby, who felt that the aircraft were too exposed by having to attack with the moon behind them.)
The New Zealand astronomer, Brian Carter , was impressed by the producers’ desire to establish authenticity:
‘Somebody just rang up. I didn’t realise it was for Peter Jackson until later… I think these days film-makers like to get things as right as possible. In the past there have been a few bloopers.’
Dambusters (the film’s working title) is not the only production in hand at the Peter Jackson factory of dreams. There are also a series of three TinTin movies starring Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, as well as LOTR prequel The Hobbitt, and The Lovely Bones, which features Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and, best of all, Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher in The Sopranos.
No word yet on who is to be cast in Dambusters. James McAvoy has been tipped, but I suspect that this is because he is (a) British (b) roughly the right age and (c) looked good in a Second World War uniform in Atonement, which has brought him more attention than perhaps he wants. (He is also rumoured to be in The Hobbitt.) McAvoy is of course far too handsome to be cast as Guy Gibson. Ann Shannon, who knew Gibson well, once said that Mickey Rooney would have been the ideal choice to play him.
These reports would suggest that the earliest possible date for release of Dambusters would be 2010, which is its provisional date on IMDB. But given that The Hobbitt is unlikely to appear before 2011, it might well not be out until then.
UPDATE: This blog entry was originally posted in July 2008. For more up to date information about the remake of The Dam Busters see other postings on this blog in the category Dambusters Remake.
FURTHER UPDATE, 16 December 2009: Jackson confirms shooting starts in 2010
Dambusters Blog 