I’m Making a Commitment — To My Untitled Moon Project » 30ninjas

I’m Making a Commitment — To My Untitled Moon Project

Share on Facebook posted 08-06-09 by Doug Liman

Hey, Ninjas,

This week’s been all about two things: editing Fair Game, the political thriller starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts that I’m directing, and choosing my next directing project. I’m not someone who develops lots of movies endlessly; I like to develop and commit. And it now looks like my Untitled Moon Project (it really needs a title) is next, because Simon Kinberg (my partner from Mr. and Mrs. Smith) just did some amazing work on it.

Every draft of the script has been really exciting and really solid. The movie is about a private expedition to the Moon — present day. Not science fiction. So real, in fact, that I debated spending $100 million to make the movie or $100 million to really go to the Moon and just shoot a documentary there. The heroes of my film steal all the old Apollo parts to rebuild Apollo 18, which was canceled in 1972 before it launched.

We had issues getting to the launch and making the concept work, that if you could get the parts necessary to go to the Moon — parts that are sitting in museums, in archives, and university libraries — then it’s just a treasure hunt to go find the right parts and put them all back together like a giant Lego set. They’re all proven to work — they put a man on the Moon six times — and they’ve been sitting inside, for the most part well cared for. All you need to do is steal the appropriate parts and you just put them all together and go to the Moon. I also want to do that concept with the tone of The Bourne Identity or Fair Game (realistic, fast paced) and have characters who are truly extraordinary. Getting that to work has been a vexing problem that Simon Kinberg has finally cracked.

The other thing that I think Simon is nailing is an amazing character not only for Jake Gyllenhaal to play but also for the other lead to play — an amazing female character — as well as a great love story. Jake’s been a lot like Matt Damon was in The Bourne Identity — these are actors who are fiercely committed to doing something original, not derivative — off the beaten path. And we’re writing Moon for Jake’s voice. That part of the process has been sitting in rooms with him, riffing out dialogue, and figuring out not only what would be the best character for the movie but who the best character is for Jake for this movie. So from a character standpoint the script took a tremendous leap forward.

We’re working on starting a line producer and an assistant director this week. While Simon figures out the second half of the script, we’ll figure out budget. The second half didn’t need nearly as much work as the first part, so we’re optimistic that he’s going to nail that. He had a much bigger challenge facing him in fixing the prelaunch section of the script. So we’re in the phase of telling the studio, Paramount, how much the movie’s going to cost. We’ve been doing extensive research to figure out how we can create the surface of the Moon in a way that is as real as Bourne felt and Fair Game’s going to feel. More later.