Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Coming Soon: Zach Snyder + High School Musical

By Chase Kahn

Zach Snyder's next project, Sucker Punch, set for release in March of 2011, sounds like the director's most interesting project. Free from the chains and on-the-rails limitations of an adaptation, maybe Snyder, who has fiddled around with a marginal remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead to two interesting but deeply flawed graphic novel reenactments - 300, Watchmen - can use his unique and unmistakably keen eye for style and make a film that is completely and wholly his own.

All three of his features have been divisive to say the least, and as much as I despise his fanboy tentpoles of recent years, I refuse to believe there isn't a place for someone like him. Sucker Punch is being sold as "Alice in Wonderland with guns". To put it another way, it follows a young girl named Blondie who is institutionalized by her evil stepfather and uses an alternative reality -- i.e. breaking loose and going 'Leonidas' on their asses -- as a coping stragedy.



Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) will play the lead, an interesting choice to say the least, with Emily Browning (Lemony Snicket, The Uninvited), Jena Malone (The Ruins, Donnie Darko) and Abbie Cornish (Bright Star, Stop-Loss) rounding out the all female supporting cast. Snyder and Steve Shibuya co-wrote the script and stor.

This just sound right to me. Snyder should be the Quentin Tarantino of Warner Bros. His films should be ultra-stylized, green-screen, tongue-in-cheeck schlock fests -- that's what kind of guy he is, and it didn't translate well to the material of "Watchmen". Sucker Punch has real potential to be a gothic, perverse and blood-splattered Pan's Labyrinth. Don't worry about the fanboys, don't worry about the running-time, the studio, the source material, just do your thing and let's see what happens.





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