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The Boondock Saints thing was a big stink back when it happened. The guy who wrote it was a bartender, had never read a script before so really even had no idea how to format one. So, he located and read a script, then checked out a type writer from the library, sat down and wrote Boondocks. Now this was right after Pulp Fiction and every studio was looking for a hip new guy with a humble background and who wrote witty dialogue whom they could market as the next Tarantino. Seems they thought the Boondocks guy fit the bill and bidding war ensued. I forgot what he finally got for the script, but it was at least a million bucks---plus a contract to direct five movies, and the studio (Miramax, I think) bought and gave him the damn bar where he worked. Now years pass and the script keeps bopping around from director to director, and suddenly it's post Matrix and no one gives a damn anymore about smart, witty crime movies. Blockbuster Films buys a bunch of unproduced scripts from the studios, and Boondocks was one of them. Wow! How's that for a strange story? The bad thing is that it killed the spec script market for all first-time writers. After the Boondocks fiasco, Hollywood generally doesn't show much interest in orignal, indie-type scripts from new guys. I remember this because I had just finished a crime/road-movie script that I thought was rather clever, but quickly realized the only way after Boondocks to get something like that made wass to do it yourself.
Last I heard about Fury Road was actually CNN of all places. Contracts were signed and everything was ready to go, George Miller directing from a script he claimed took him 15 years to write, and Gibson was reportedly getting a 30 million---the most any actor has ever got from one movie. But it was going to be filmed in Kuwait and pre-production was shut down when it became obvious we were going to invade iraq. Now Gibson is working on his twelve-hour movie about the life of Christ, so I'm guessing it'll be a while before we see Fury Road.
The movie I really wanted to see was the third Conan movie, Conan The King, written and directed by my boy John Milius. He had finished the script and was set to go when ass-clown Arnold ran for office instead of admitting that his action career was suffering and no one was going to pay 8 bucks to see him blow stuff up anymore. I read in a movie magazine a few months ago that the Wachowski bros (however you spell their names) own the rights to Conan and are planning at least one R-rated anime-type STV Conan movie to be released later this yr. If that does good, then maybe we'll see The Rock playing Conan in a different Milius-scripted Conan movie. Sounds cool...but I would have loved to seen Milius' take on the aging Conan.
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