From a "Freudian sex Tarzan" to an adaptation of Ramayan 3392 A.D . . .

Australian-based screenwriter John Collee (above) is not afraid to tackle any project, and I mean any project. From a sexy version of Tarzan to a script for Steven Spielberg on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Collee is known as one of the most versatile wordsmiths in the industry. Renowned for his work on Oscar-winning films such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Happy Feet, he most recently brought Charles Dawrin to life in the new biopic Creation.

But Collee says the highlight of his 23-year career as a screenwriter was working on a Tarzan script with Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican director of Pan's Labyrinth and the Hell Boy franchise.
"Guillermo is a very smart guy and has a great understanding of story.
" I worked with him for some months when he was doing Hellboy 2 and we were going to do a sexy Tarzan.
"A Freudian sex Tarzan.
"It emphasised his experience of seeing a woman for the first time and it was all about sex in the jungle.
"It was great fun, but as you can tell it's probably unmakable.
"It would have been quite an adult Tarzan.''Unfortunately Collee says the Tarzan project was `shelved' as Warner Brothers began work on other films and he and del Toro moved on to other projects.
"Scripts are funny - they pay you these huge amounts of money to write them and then they put them in a vault somewhere,'' he says.

It is a phenomenon the former doctor says he is used to. Several years ago Collee finished a screenplay for Steven Spielberg's big budget take on a famous World War II battle, however, that project too has been locked in a vault.
"It was a script on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, which was like the death star of the second World War,'' he says.
"It was an extraordinarily impregnable fighting machine that this small group of Australian and American men were eventually able to defeat.
"It was a script that I was really happy with, but that one went off the radar too.''

Two Collee projects that have not gone off the radar are Dirt Music, an adaptation of the acclaimed Tim Winton novel, and The Drowner, based on the Robert Drewe book, both which are currently filming in Australia. He also wrote the early screenplay for the up and coming animated action film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole from Zack Synder, the director of 300 and Watchmen. But the pressure is on for Collee's take on the cult comic book series Ramayan 3392 A.D (below), which has a huge international fan base.
"It's a really interesting one and an Indian epic,'' he says.
"It's a religious story at its core, but it's also a kidnap story.
"The Indian hero Rama's lover is kidnapped by the dark lord and it's a mission to get her back.''While the final adjustments are being made to his script and the studio searches for stars and a director, a similar process is happening to Collee's attempt to convert the Onimusha video game series (below) into a live-action feature film.
"It's a computer game set in medieval Japan and I've done a couple of drafts on that,'' he says.
"It's a fantasy about a double kidnapping where a princess and the hero's girlfriend are both kidnapped, so these two men go on a quest together.
"The film got very close to being made and then the global financial crisis happened and everything went pear shaped."

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Collee gets creative

From dancing penguins to sailing the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars, Australian-based screenwriter John Collee brings a young Charles Darwin to life in his latest project Creation (pictured above). I had a chat to Collee a few weeks back about this, that and the other thing, and have put together a neat little yarn on his work with Creation here. However, Collee also told me some crazy stories about collaborations with Guillermo del Toro and Steven Spielberg, and forth coming projects, which I will tie together in another story over the next few days. Stay tuned baboons.

When Scottish-born screenwriter John Collee, the writer behind Oscar-winning films such as Happy Feet and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, sat down to write a biopic of Charles Darwin, he hit a wall. He did not want to portray the English naturalist, who came up with the theories of evolution and natural selection, as just another `boring scientist'. So he turned to the writings of Darwin's great, great grandson Randal Keynes, who presented the scientist in a unique light.
``The Darwin you get on screen is always the guy with the beard and he has always been portrayed as this sober and rather boring intellectual,'' says Collee.
``Whereas the Darwin that comes out in the descriptions by Randal (Keynes) is of this charming, young dad.
``You get this really human perspective which is also taken from all of his kids who wrote stories about him.
``A guy you thought you knew through his science actually comes across as this fabulous family man.''

For Collee, who has lived in Sydney for over decade with his wife and children, this is someone to whom he could relate. He used Keynes biography of Darwin, Annie's Box, as the basis for the screenplay Creation, a new film directed by Jon Amiel. Starring Paul Bettany as Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma, Creation follows Darwin in the lead up to publishing On The Origin Of Species, where he struggles to find a balance between his revolutionary theories and the relationship with his religious wife, whose faith contradicts his work. The couple are also battling to come to terms with the death of their 10-year-old daughter Annie, who had scarlet fever. Despite having seen and achieved many things, Collee says he choose to focus on this chapter of Darwin's life because it `represented something about the modern condition'.
``I like writing films about ideas and there are powerful ideas in this and they crystalise around a tragic event; the death of child,'' says Collee.
``They (Darwin and Emma) were very much in love, they had 10 kids, they were very inter-dependent on each other, but she was completely Christian and he was a scientist.
``The miraculous thing about their relationship was that it worked and that they were able to live so closely together.
``So it's about the resolution of science and religion, and how they find an alternative to the language of religion and of science, with love.''

Having worked with Bettany before on Master and Commander, Collee says although he tried not to write the role for him specifically, but he kept coming to mind due to his `uncanny resemblance' to a young Darwin.
``He came to mind more and more as I wrote the script but I try not to write with someone in mind because of the nature of the business,'' he says.
``But young Darwin looked very much like Paul Bettany and when we were writing Master and Commander Weir had a young Darwin as the model for `the Doctor' and I kept getting the memory of Paul as that character.
``There were lots of things that made me keep going back to him.
``And Paul gave Jennifer the script to read and she then wanted to play Emma.
``Because they're married in real life they bring that context to the roles too.''

Creation opens in cinemas next Thursday, July 15.

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A letter of sorts

Twilight, Twilight, Twilight. Where do I start? First off, your plagiarized content becomes a best seller creating all sorts of frenzy amongst book worms worldwide. Then you get a movie deal complete with credible director, hot, young cast and a budget smaller than Tom Cruise. Tacky special effects and mediocrity aside you become a box-office smash reducing teenage girls to squealing, blabbering, Rob Pattison-raping messes. The development of your sequels has been all anyone wants to hear about. Now, just as New Moon has begun filming and I thought all hope of you becoming a decent movie franchise is lost, Juan Antonio Bayona is announced as the most likely candidate to take on your third installment. Who is Juan Antonio Bayano you ask? Oh, just the hottest young (horror) filmmaker to come out of Spain since Fernan Gomez (with the support of Guillermo del Toro no less).  Of course, simply because The Orphanage is one of my favourite films, that doesn't mean you should put all your faith in Juan Antonio Bayano. After all, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Drew Barrymore is one of the other directors Summit Entertainment are seriously considering for your third piece. There, there (insert self patting Twilight's shoulder as it sobs into hands). I don't want to stick the knife in, but do you know what Barrymore said when asked if she's going to direct Eclipse? "Because I'm a director now." Yes, that's a direct quote from the woman herself and with the annunciation of an eight-year-old child she has been able to some up everyones worst fears in less than five words. Being the pro-active pen pal that I am, I have included some pictures of the said directors for you to peruse. Don't be fooled Twilight, Barrymore may be easy on the eye and have plenty of sway in Hollywood, but keep in mind she brought us such `quality' films as Ever After and Never Been Kissed. Better luck with the fourth installment ay. 

(Above) Spanish horror film maker Juan Antonio Bayano, potential Eclipse director or . . .

the job could go to Drew Barrymore (below) in what would be her second feature film.

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