Eisner Preps New Creature Feature

Director Breck Eisner told SCI FI Wire that he is preparing an update to the 1954 SF movie Creature From the Black Lagoon and has found a pristine location in the Amazon in which to film it.

"I want it to be authentic; I want it to be a sea of green rather than CG," said Eisner in an interview after a news conference on May 2 in Pasadena, Calif., to promote NBC's Fear Itself. "It is certainly easy to update the story. It was shot in modern times at the time it was originally made, and this will be shot today in the Amazon. We are updating the tone of the original."

Writer Gary Ross, who was nominated for best original screenplay for the Tom Hanks fantasy Big, has updated Creature From the Black Lagoon for Eisner.

Eisner said that a telephone pole and wire are clearly visible in some shots in the first Creature film, which was shot mostly on the Universal Studios back lot. "Of course, in those days nobody thought you'd be able to stop the film and freeze the frame," the director said with a laugh. "We had a crew in the Amazon in Peru. ... We found a place called the Forest of Mirrors, because you can see [from] overhead [that] there are so many lagoons on a thousand-mile green-carpet river, and we found the lagoon we're going to shoot in." He said the river water level drops 50 feet in the winter months.

Before focusing full attention on his version of Creature, Eisner said he is going to finish a remake of George Romero's The Crazies. He originally intended to do the SF horror thriller remake after doing Creature, but decided to reverse the projects. Both are being done for Universal.

Eisner's installment of the Fear Itself series is called "The Sacrifice," written by Mick Garris from a story by Del Howison (Dark Delicacies), about four criminals who find themselves stranded in a fort run by three seductive women and a creature. (NBC and Universal are owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) --Michael Szymanski