It has now been over four years since the adaptation of the hit video game "American McGee's Alice" - simply known as Alice - was announced. The project has gone through many hands including the infamous Wes Craven and has listed Sarah Michelle Gellar as the star, which she still claims she'd love to do although it looks like we have some grim news. Every single time it looks like the film might get off the ground, it comes to a screeching halt. Now Scott Faye, the producer of "Max Payne" and the upcoming adaptation, talked with the official American McGee blog about the status of the project. Read on for the skinny.
"The Alice project is presently in “turnaround” from Universal Studios," Producer Scott Faye tells the American McGee blog. " Jon and Erich Hoeber have written a very compelling feature film screenplay adaptation of the Alice game. Their screenplay will certainly serve as a jumping off point as we find a new studio home for the project. In terms of the realistic chances of seeing the Alice project being produced, all I can say is that I have invested (along with Julie Yorn and Karen Lauder, my producing partners on the project) a lot of time and effort in this project. We will get it made. I offer my eight year effort to get the best version of the Max Payne film produced as proof of my tenacity as a film producer. Every film produced is a challenge. The major film studios are producing fewer movies every year, so to have one of them be yours is a very special experience. On the positive side, the Alice in Wonderland mythology is wonderfully compelling, and is an indelible concept in the minds of studio executives and the movie going public."
Faye also chats a bit about Sarah Michelle Gellars involvement. "Sarah is not currently attached to the project. Her initial involvement was the result of a very talented and effective member of her management team who became aware of the project and pursued on Sarah’s behalf."
It gets even worse from here as FRIDAY THE 13TH and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE director Marcus Nispel isn't attached to the project anymore.
"Marcus was at one point attached to direct the Alice film. He is not involved with the project at this time. I’m looking forward to seeing his take on the retelling of Friday the 13th when it comes to theaters next year."
Faye also chats a bit about where the script stands and what he feels about the current adaptation.
"As I’ve referenced above, Jon and Erich Hoeber have written a very compelling feature film adaptation of the Alice game. The Hoebers have been working with me on the Alice project longer than anyone with the exception of my producing partner Karen Lauder. To be perfectly honest, the script still needs a little bit of work. The downtime since the Hoebers turned in their last draft has allowed me to establish a bit of creative objectivity. I suspect that the next draft of the screenplay will allow the project to take a substantial leap forward toward production."
SYNOPSIS: Ten years after she tumbled through the looking-glass and into Wonderland, Alice now resides inside a mental asylum. After her parents are killed in a tragic fire, the young girl grows up to become a disturbed young woman. After failing to convince people that her visit to Wonderland was indeed real, Alice is given a second chance to return to this strange realm. Equipped with courage, a keen appetite for the bizarre and a lethal array of transmogrified toys, she'll penetrate the strongholds of her enemies, confront the forces of evil and put the wicked Queen of Hearts in her place.
"I offer my eight year effort to get the best version of the Max Payne film produced as proof of my tenacity as a film producer."
Funny, because everything I've seen, everything about the casting and everything I've heard from people who worked on the movie here in Toronto, Max Payne is going to be an awful trainwreck.
I see these setbacks as good news since everyone who's been associated with it couldn't do it justice anyway.
They need to give it to someone with real talent and vision like Kazuaki (Casshern) Kirya or del Toro.
Marcus Nispel's involvement in that piece of crap movie 'Pathfinder' was the first sign things had gone wrong. He needed to keep working after his first feature film and since Alice was not yet underway and he needed a paycheck and grabbed the first script to come his way (despite how bad it was). In the meantime, with Alice, there was a script and a director but no money to push the project forward. I became even more pessimistic about the project when I heard Sarah Michelle Gellar's name mentioned. The studios need a name that will give them just cause to invest the kind of a money a dark fantasy like this requires, and the last big budget movie she starred in was Southland Tales which was panned by critics and refused a theatrical wide release. They need, at the very least, a star with enough clout to convince a studio to back this project. With Max Payne they have Mark Wahlberg (whose gonna be a big name for a while longer despite his awful performance in 'The Happening') and now they don't even have a director on this project. So we get another four years of waiting. In the meantime we have two other Alice in the Wonderland adaptations (one of them from Marilyn Manson by the way) on the way.
My 2 cents: Get one of the new French or Belgian directors (someone like Gaspar Noe or Xavier Gens) to direct it, and get Devon Aoki ("deadly little" Miho in SIN CITY) as Alice.
This is an ancient project. I've already gotten tired of the video game and sold it to a used record store. It seems like people are still trying to finish it simply for the sake of finishing it, and that's no way to go about it. The idea of a dark version of this story has lost virtually all its novelty. As was already said, there are other dark versions coming out. And isn't the original story pretty dark already? It's sort of like the importance of timing in comedy; this joke just isn't funny anymore.
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Alice
STARRING: DIRECTOR: WRITER: American McGee, Erich and Jon Hoeber
"The Alice project is presently in “turnaround” from Universal Studios," Producer Scott Faye tells the American McGee blog. " Jon and Erich Hoeber have written a very compelling feature film screenplay adaptation of the Alice game. Their screenplay will certainly serve as a jumping off point as we find a new studio home for the project. In terms of the realistic chances of seeing the Alice project being produced, all I can say is that I have invested (along with Julie Yorn and Karen Lauder, my producing partners on the project) a lot of time and effort in this project. We will get it made. I offer my eight year effort to get the best version of the Max Payne film produced as proof of my tenacity as a film producer. Every film produced is a challenge. The major film studios are producing fewer movies every year, so to have one of them be yours is a very special experience. On the positive side, the Alice in Wonderland mythology is wonderfully compelling, and is an indelible concept in the minds of studio executives and the movie going public."
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