Time was,
when John Cusack announced that he was doing a movie with Jan de Bont, our
reaction would have been predictable. RomCom hero joins high-budget hack! Will
Womb Raider unite the sexes in box office bliss?
Alas,
those days are gone, and friendly (read: business) overtures have whittled the
spears with which we once jabbed Jan down to toothpicks small enough that they
would have even fit into Jack Warner’s famously clenched bunghole.
Huh?
So I’ll
take a different tack, like so: Holy Bible, it’s another Eric Red movie! It’s
not enough that the remake of his own script for The Hitcher gave him a
new lease on life. Nor is he satisfied to be directing again based on his
script 100 Feet, with refined hottie Famke Janssen and Bobby Cannavale
starring.
Stopping Power, to be co-written with Skip ‘Swordfish’
Woods, sees Cusack as a test pilot chasing after his kidnapped daughter. Older
news about the pitch placed the action at least partially in the dad’s RV,
which was hijacked by a thief, who took daddy’s little girl as collateral. The
RV might be gone, but if New Line can’t get MEG made, de Bont could always crib the giant shark for Cusack to ride like a watery Kyle McLachlan. That would get my dollars.