GODZILLA Traps Frank Darabont; Four Potential Leads Announced

The long in development return of The King of the Monsters, Godzilla, is getting closer to production.  According to Deadline, Frank Darabont has been brought on by financier, Legendary Pictures to do a final rewrite of the massive 3D tentpole.  Darabont, who adapted and directed The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist most recently completed the pilot to L.A. Noir after his dismissal as showrunner from the hit series, The Walking Dead.  The film goes into production in March under the helm of Gareth Edwards with a targeted May 16, 2014 release date.  Legendary’s Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni are producing with Brian Rogers.

This news comes with a bit of controversy.  Last night Hitfix reported that producers Dan Lin and Roy Lee, who are both production partners for Warner Bros., left the project amicably, although Deadline hints that might not be the case.  The giant monster previously had an unsuccessful American revamp in 1998 in Godzilla, from writer/director Roland Emmerich and writer/producer  Dean Devlin and starred Matthew Broderick,  Jean Reno and Maria Pitillo.

ComicBookMovie has also learned via the Twitter feed from Variety‘s Justin Kroll that four three actors are in contention for the human lead: Henry Cavill (Man of Steel), Scoot McNairy (Argo) and Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class) and that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has taken himself out of the running.  Apparently Cavill and Gordon-Levitt are the studio’s choices and Landry Jones and McNairy are those of the director.  Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see director Edwards team up with his Monsters-star McNairy.

Since 1954, there have been almost thirty films starring Godzilla.