Of course something like this comes in right after I post about how I’m planning on going to see the film. Now, this is rumor of the ‘friend of a friend’ variety but it’s credible and more than a little discouraging. Here’s an email I got this morning reporting that Alex Proyas has had creative control over I, Robot taken from him by the studio and how he’s less than pleased with the results:
Hey Bubba, rather than posting this in some long forgotten thread about the movie i thought i’d send this straight to you. I have a friend who is working with Fox this summer doing some sound mixing and he just finished working on I Robot. During the time he spent on that film he got to hang out with Alex Proyas a bit and he told me something that has discouraged me immensely. Proyas isn’t happy with the film, apparently Fox wanted to see some changes, so they made them happen and, as i said, Proyas is dissapointed with his film. Generally not a good sign when a director doesn’t like his own movie.
Twitch
I wish I could say I didn’t believe this but the sad fact is that I do. Proyas has already been openly and vocally upset about the marketing for the film, disliking the studio’s trailer for the film so much that he cut his own version and made it available off of his own MysteryClock.com website so it’s certainly no stretch to say that his vision for the film and the studio’s vision are considerably different things. This makes me sad.
A few years back Day-vuhl and I ran a stupid little website called Things I Can Give the Finger in which we posted pictures of ourselves giving things the finger. Alex Proyas was our first celebrity participant and between that experience and lurking about on the MysteryClock forums, in which Proyas is constantly answering questions and just generally shooting the breeze with fans and wannabe film makers, I’ve become convinced that as well as being an enormously talented film maker Proyas is one of the genuinely good people in the film world. I’m convinced that if not for the Brandon Lee tragedy The Crow would have made Proyas a hugely sought after talent and there’s nothing I’d like more than to see this film make buckets of money so the man will be free to do his own projects his own way for a good long time but if there’s a behind-the-scenes power struggle going on here the chances of seeing the real Proyas on screen become remarkably smaller. Here’s hoping Fox didn’t mess with it too much.
