Oliver Hirschbiegel was a pretty hot commodity in Hollywood coming off his one-two punch German films Das Experiment and Downfall, and Warner Bros snatched him up for their film The Invasion, an updated version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Produced by Joel Silver, the scifi film stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and I was pretty excited about it.
Then the film seemed to drop off the radar a bit. When I spoke to Daniel Craig at the Casino Royale junket, he mentioned that it was coming out, but didn’t say too much else about it. Was he avoiding the subject?
And could it be that the film dropped off the radar because Joel Silver and Warner Bros are unhappy with it? That seems to be the case, as gossip rag website TMZ is reporting that the Wachowski Siblings are being brought in to rewrite the film’s ending to make it more exciting. An “insider” tells the site: ‘This is normal. It’s a thriller, and occasionally, a studio will want it to make it, you know, actually thrilling.’
Yikes.
I don’t know who will be shooting this new ending – I have to imagine that Silver turned to the Wachowskis to rewrite the finale because he wasn’t getting anywhere with Hirschbiegel, who was probably stubbornly standing up for “art” and his “vision” of the movie. Those foreigners!
Bringing in new writers to punch a script up isn’t all that unusual, of course. What makes this difference is that, as far as I know, The Invasion is finished. And of course going back for reshoots isn’t that unusual either, but Silver bringing in such high profile people – and people so very, very loyal to him – seems to hint at problems inside the production. I wonder if Hirschbiegel will even do press for this film…