He turned Will Smith into a cerulean spirit in the 2019 live-action remake of Aladdin and remade Sherlock Holmes twice. Earn big money at the box office as a daring rogue. But Guy Ritchie as a filmmaker has remained synonymous with sprawling ensemble pictures such as “Snatch,” “The Gentlemen,” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.” Cockney accent. (The latest of such outings, the goofy international spy skylark called “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” featuring Jason Statham, Hugh Grant, and Aubrey Plaza, was released in March this year. Arrived with half-hearted fanfare).
So why is Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, the somber Iraqi war drama about an American sergeant (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his Afghan interpreter (Dar Salim) officially bearing his name? The first of the director’s 15 features? According to US distributor MGM, the answer turned out to be pretty mundane. Another company had already claimed the title. (Weinstein’s company-produced “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” lost a similar challenge in court from Warner and his Brothers in 2013, with a last-minute, hasty change.)
But this kind of déjà vu is nothing new: loose names like ‘Crash’, ‘Heat’ and ‘Rush’ have played double duty over the past few decades; ‘Twilight’. Named after the infamous 1998 neo-noir starring Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon and the 2008 teenage vampire juggernaut, the cult 1990 mystery by Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér. It launched four fangs-baring nasty sequels as well. (Ritchie might have called his latest film “The Interpreter” instead, had that designation not already been claimed in his 2005 Sydney Pollack political thriller starring Nicole Kidman.) No. Unfortunately, it goes back to blueprints.)
The story behind “Covenant”” Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature last month, strays into the weeds of copyright law, but more easily justifies its qualifiers.A classic still widely seen as the definitive and jaw-dropping remake led by Tom Hanks — it Currently, it remains at a tight approval rating of 29%. On the review site Rotten Tomatoes – it was released in less than two months.
But in a broader sense, the inclusion of del Toro’s name also serves as an abbreviation and a promise that not only did the old tale of the wooden boy come to life, but also its creator’s particular vision. It is also an omen of His style and dazzling gothic his grotesque, distinctive visuals in films such as ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006) and Best Picture-winning ‘The Shape of Water’ (2017).That del Toro actually shared responsibility for directing ‘his’ ‘Pinocchio’ It’s almost like a footnote with Mark Gustafson. An industry journeyman with extensive writing and animation credits, Gustafsson (“Fantastic Mr. Fox”, formerly California Raisin) shared both the stage and statuette with del Toro at this year’s Oscars ceremony. , it is the fame of the latter. For most Hollywood metrics, it matters.
With “Pinocchio” and the 2022 Netflix horror anthology series “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,” directors from Alfred Hitchcock to Tim Burton play a role not just in title, but in their presence. has joined a long line of film directors. Even if it doesn’t strictly guide the material in their hands. (The god of terror, Wes Craven, habitually did the same; see “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.”) But someone like Tyler Perry who could claim to be a one-man industry very few. at his independent studio in Atlanta. The multi-hyphen creator famously put his signature on several film and TV titles released under its umbrella. The patriarch of a certain age cushion.
Madea is Perry’s wholesale work and is undoubtedly associated with her wig-wearing man on screen, but certain intellectual properties with roots over the centuries are the source’s more literal (and Think of the 1990s high-gross films Bram Stoker’s Dracula (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (directed by Kenneth Branagh). . Claiming the definitive version of a character that has long been handed over to the public domain. Neither film did much for these iconic novels, but show business continues as usual: Coppola’s 40-year passion project Megalopolis, which wrapped filming a few weeks ago, is partly Funded. Publicly said by his old work on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”. And Branagh recently delved into his Irish childhood for the tearful black-and-white drama Belfast (which won an Oscar for the original screenplay), and for the first time in six years Agatha Hercule in his Christie film adaptation of his Poirot. starring as , “The Haunting of Venice” is scheduled for September of this year. Neither he nor Christie are officially billed in the title.
