MY MOVIE WEEK...with Mike Shaw

With the new Tomb Raider video game getting excellent reviews and selling ridiculously well, producers are looking to give Lara Croft’s cinema career a similar boost.

Game developer Crystal Dynamics had already been working with GK films on a new film project and now MGM is partnering with the smaller studio to get things up and running.

Development is being headed up by GK founder Graham King, with no director in place at this stage. There are no solid ideas about who will star, either, although it’s expected that Angelina Jolie will be replaced, as the new game features a much-younger version of Croft. Early speculation is that The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence will be first best pick, with Felicity Jones (Cemetery Junction) and Kent’s Gemma Arterton also in the running.

Despite the less-than-enthusiastic response to Prometheus last year, Fox is apparently keen to get a sequel out into the world as soon as possible.

Screenwriter Damon Lindelof has already ruled himself out of a return, which has left Fox and director Ridley Scott stunned, but Lindelof says that are plenty of other writers out there who can do the job instead.

“As to whether Ridley and Fox are ‘freaking out’ about me not working on a sequel, well that’s news to me,” says Lindelof. “I retain awesome relationships with both. More importantly, the idea that there aren’t many, MANY writers out there capable of taking the reins is sort of ridiculous. I did not map out a trilogy and then walk when the going got tough. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know me and doesn’t know the truth.”

Lindelof is right, there are hundreds of other writers out there who can handle the gig, and this is all a lot of fuss over nothing. It doesn’t matter who is scripting or starring; If Ridley Scott and the studio want to do a sequel, then there will be a damn sequel.

Will anyone go to see it, though?

Will Smith was originally asked to play the lead in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, but ultimately turned it down. No one was quite sure why, until now. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Smith said: “Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead!”

So, megastar Will Smith turned down a hugely-anticipated film from one of the best writer/directors working today because the part wasn’t big enough? What a fool. You know he turned down Neo in The Matrix too?

It’s a horribly shortsighted point of view. Leonardo DiCaprio usually plays the lead, but he took a supporting role in Django and was absolutely superb. Ironically, Christoph Waltz (the guy who Smith thought had the lead) was considered a supporting actor for awards like the Oscars, while Jamie Foxx (Django) was promoted as the film’s lead.

Bryan Singer directed the first two X-Men films, and is now helming the latest one, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, but it seems he found it really difficult to walk away from the series and let Brett Ratner handle X-Men 3.

“I’ve never told anybody this,” he says, “but I found the whole letting go of the characters for X-Men 3 so traumatising that a friend had to take me to a secret location and show me the reels so far, just so I could make my peace with it.”

He chose not to be involved with X-Men 3 after being asked to direct Superman Returns, a film he admits has flaws.

“I really loved the old Richard Donner film and I was too reverential with the material,” says Singer. “That, and I tried to put too much in.”

It’s always heartening when a director is able to admit their mistakes. No X-Men films have matched up to X-Men 2 (although First Class was pretty darn good) so I’m looking forward to seeing Singer’s return to the X Universe when X-Men: Days Of Future Past opens in July next year.