Alex Proyas Hired to Direct Legendary's 'Paradise Lost' Movie« FirstShowing.net

TakethatUniversal! It looks like directorAlex Proyas(The Crow, Dark City, I Robot, Knowing) mightnotbe shootingDracula Year Zerowith Sam Worthingtonnext year after all.Legendary Pictureshas a movie that they were developing withDay the Earth Stood Still'sdirector Scott Derrickson calledParadise Lost, based on the epic 17th-century English poem by John Milton, butVarietyreports that Legendary has hired Alex Proyas to direct in place of Derrickson and reveals some exciting details about how epic and huge this project will be. I know this is a high profile project for Legendary, so we might see it sooner than you think.

Paradise Lost, originally published in1667in ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse, tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangelsMichaelandLucifer(basically the devil - the bad guy), and will be crafted as an action vehicle that will includeaerial warfare, possibly shot in 3D. Knowing that the guy behindThe CrowandDark Citywill be doing this is awesome. I've seen a glimpse of some concept art and this movie will be epic and incredibly stylized in a way you've never seen. Stuart Hazeldine (Exam) developed the primary draft of the screenplay that was originally written by Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi. Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dreamcatcher) provided a polish as well as Ryan Condal, of the most recent draft. Legendary's Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni will produce along with Vincent Newman.

Variety doesn't say anything about how soon they're hoping to move into production, but I have a feeling it's Proyas' priority and something he's really pushing to start sometime in2011. At least that's what I've heard Legendary wants, since it was already in development for a while with Derrickson. The project is only in the early pre-production stages and we don't know too much about it, but I've got a feeling this could be pretty awesome in the end. I'm also just happy to see Proyas getting back to something that he can put his unique stylistic touch on, as I love his more stylistic genre stuff more than his contemporaryKnowingkind of work.

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