After having seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull earlier this week, I’ve got Frank Darabont on the brain. Early in the development process for Indy 4 he was the writer originally hired to write the script. Spielberg and Ford loved what he came up with, but Lucas infamously rejected it, hiring David Koepp to write something else. It’s hard not to wonder if Darabont’s take might have been better. Maybe he’d at least have had the sense not to do that weird bit with the refrigerator. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.
We’ll never get to watch Darabont’s Indiana Jones movie, but he’s moved on. According to ScreenDaily he’s directing a thriller called Law Abiding Citizens. The movie is about a criminal mastermind who runs the city from his prison cell, and Gerard Butler plays the prosecutor out to stop him.
Darabont’s biggest career successes have all been in the prison movie genre. He earned huge acclaim for The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both movies centered on the lives of men in prison. Personally I think his non-prison movies are criminally underappreciated, but the world at large loves Darabont’s jail cell dramas, so going back behind bars kind of makes sense for him.
Interestingly, Frank Darabont will not write the script for Law Abiding Citizens. Normally he only directs his own words, but in this case the script was written by Kurt Wimmer. Don’t be surprised if Darabont gives it a few rewrites though. The guy has a long career as a script doctor, and it would make sense for him to use his talents on something he’s directing himself.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Darabont-Returns-To-Prison-8878.html
