The chance to meet the legendary Richard Zanuck was more than enough reason to get me to the Beverly Hilton this morning for the Yes Man junket. And he didn’t disappoint – when asked about James Cameron’s reported ‘disappointment’ that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was shooting in 2D and being rendered in 3D, Zanuck barked ‘I defy Cameron to tell the difference between the tests that we did!’ like an old Hollywood mogul.
After the press conference I cornered him with a vital question: is there talk of Jaws being remade, re-imagined, rebooted or revisited? The good news is that not as far as he knows. Of course Zanuck doesn’t need to be notified if Universal decides to pull Bruce the shark out of retirement, but he told me that they would have to go through Spielberg, who likely would do his best to block any new film. That didn’t stop three Jaws sequels from happening, but with Steve taking Dreamworks to Universal, I imagine they won’t be pissing him off anytime in the near future.
Zanuck had a lot to say about the state of Hollywood today, and some tales to tell about the making of Jaws (all of them familiar, but it was Richard Zanuck telling me about the making of Jaws. I think I have the right to get psyched). I’ll be bringing you all of that in more detail later, but for now rest assured that Jaws seems to be safe from modern Hollywood’s remake-a-palooze.