Robert Englund - Phantom of Manhattan

Okay. I know you’re dying to tell me. What was it about?

Well, the sequel took place in the buried train graveyards beneath the “Belle Époque” superstructure of the original subways that the sand hogs built many, many layers below the current subways of New York. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the urban legend of the “mole people”… You’ll see it occasionally on LAW AND ORDER or a NEW YORK CSI, but there are people that live beneath the warming grates and the subway vents of New York. There’s entire little societies down there. And in the sequel, they have me, the Phantom, having come from Europe and living down there, and composing down there in an old robber baron’s train car. And he’s served by all these homeless kids. Think “Fagin” in OLIVER TWIST. So, my children will go up and work this surface, and I would stay below, and occasionally foray into the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. And once, while I’m going up, I hear a voice in the subway. Where the street performer’s play on the subway platform, I hear this voice. And, here’s the hitch, it’s a blind girl. The new Christine is blind. She’s Italian. Her name is Christina. Her father, think Gepetto in PINOCHHIO, even though it’s contemporary, we make him a new Italian immigrant to Am erica, perhaps Siciliano, and he accompanies her on violin, which is echoes of Claude Rains. Her voice is the perfect instrument for the opera I’m working on. Plus she’s blind, she doesn’t know what I look like. She just hears my soothing voice. So I school her and coach her. Well, she still has to play on the subways to make ends meet. Her father is killed by skinheads. I avenge her father… There you go. There you get your splatter quotient there… And then, at a decadent opera party that uses the subway trains for an opening night gala, they pull her station and they hear her singing. They discover her. She’s brought into the professional world of opera, and so my opera will never be made. Also, concurrently, they discover a physician who can correct her sight with laser surgery, so now she can see again. So now the third act is, Will the Phantom kill her? Will he kill the surgeon who restored her sight? Will he thwart her debut at the New York City Opera? Or, as it turns out, you see me sitting there in my box seat, with my face sewn together, and I listen to her perform, and that’s enough for me. And the last image is me walking down 5th Avenue in the snow with my footprints trailing. And I lift a manhole cover and go back underneath.

Wow. Can I see that movie now, please?

Exactly! And that’s what attracted me to do the film! I had a contract for a two picture deal! And that was going to be the backside. That’s why the Phantom that we did ended contemporarily in New York. So that we could bridge that. And yeah, it was a great script. Better than the first one. Phenomenal script. It had violence and sex and all of this wonderful Chaplinesque quality with the blind girl and her father. Just unfortunate that we never got that made.

Such a shame.


Interview at the link: http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/shock/c13.php

Batman Triumphant

Proposals for fifth film

Batman Triumphant

During the filming of Batman & Robin, Warner Bros. was impressed with the dailies, prompting them to immediately hire Joel Schumacher to reprise his directing duties for a third film. Writer Akiva Goldsman, who worked on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, turned down the chance to write the script.[36] In late 1996, Warner Bros. and Schumacher hired Mark Protosevich to write the script for a fifth Batman film. A projected mid-1999 release date was announced.[42] Titled Batman Triumphant, Protosevich's script had the Scarecrow as the main villain and the Joker would return as a hallucination in Batman's mind caused by the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Harley Quinn appeared as a supporting character, written as the Joker's daughter trying to kill Batman to avenge her father's death.[43] George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone were set to reprise the roles of Batman, Robin, and Batgirl.[44] Schumacher had also approached Nicolas Cage for the role of Scarecrow.[45] However, when Batman & Robin received negative reviews and failed to outgross any of its predecessors, Warner Bros. was unsure of their plans for Batman Triumphant. The studio decided it was best to consider a live-action Batman Beyond film and an adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Warner Bros. would then greenlight whichever idea suited them the most.[46] Schumacher felt he "owe[d] the Batman culture a real Batman movie. I would go back to the basics and make a dark portrayal of the Dark Knight."[47] He approached Warner Bros. to do Batman: Year One in mid-1998.[47]