“It wasn’t only dragons,” said Greenberg. More importantly, he felt it was something he had never seen before. Then in his sixties, Zanuck didn’t care about what their previous credits were or weren’t: he cared about what was on the page and what he saw was a merging of medieval and military. “I remember reading about it when it sold and thinking ‘Ah! Why didn’t I think of this? This is great!’ It sort of had to be written by people who weren’t in the film industry, because if you told anybody the pitch was ‘dragon apocalypse’ they’d be like ‘get the fuck out of my office!’” Those ‘Wisconsin guys’ Zanuck took a gamble on were Gregg Chabot and Kevin Peterka, who had never had anything made before Reign Of Fire and have never had anything made since, only adding to the mystique. “The original script was a spec that was written by these guys who I don’t think had ever written anything before, like, these Wisconsin guys,” recalled screenwriter Matthew Greenberg. Having won a Best Picture Academy Award for Driving Miss Daisy - a win that hasn’t aged well in hindsight - Zanuck was best known for producing classics like The Sound Of Music, The Verdict, and Jaws. Those reviews recognised something late Hollywood producer Richard “Dick” Zanuck also saw.
Reign of fire movie#
“Incredulity is our companion, and it is twofold: we cannot believe what happens in the movie, and we cannot believe that the movie was made.” He added that it “makes no sense on its own terms, let alone ours.” Variety’s Joe Leydon noted that it had “an uncommonly satisfying mix of medieval fantasy, high-tech military action and Mad Max-style misadventure” while the New York Times’s Elvis Mitchell added it had “a jamming B-picture buzz,” and was “loads of fun” - “the kind of swift filmmaking and high spirits that have been missing from movies for a while.” “One regards Reign Of Fire with awe,” wrote Roger Ebert in 2002. “…if you told anybody the pitch was ‘dragon Apocalypse’ they’d be like ‘get the fuck out of my office!’” “I don’t think you can afford to put those three guys in the same movie right now,” director Rob Bowman reflected. By the end of its theatrical run, it barely scraped back its $82 million budget (grossing $112 million internationally), which is an interesting figure when you consider its stars - Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Gerard Butler - were all on their way to A-List status. Set in a dystopian London besieged by dragons, Reign Of Fire debuted in third place on its opening weekend, behind Men In Black II and Road To Perdition. Gizmodo spoke to the director and screenwriter about its surprise legacy and how this wild idea became an even wilder film. Over the next two decades of cable reruns, the movie rose from the ashes to a loyal fandom. Once it hit home entertainment, the metamorphosis from flop to beloved cult film was almost instantaneous. With the tagline “Fight fire with fire,” the dragon apocalypse blockbuster Reign of Fire crashed and burned at the box-office in the summer of 2002.
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