Cussler Sinking "Sahara"?
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,13988,00.htmlby Josh Grossberg
Apr 28, 2004, 3:00 PM PT
Clive Cussler is feeling deserted by Sahara, and now the bestselling adventure writer is looking to exact some revenge.
The author-explorer is in a legal tussle with a Tinseltown production company intent on adapting his popular thriller to the big screen without his final say-so.
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The lawsuit, filed in January in Los Angeles by A-list attorney Bert Fields, claims Crusader Entertainment, the company owned by Denver financier and Qwest Communications cofounder Philip Anschutz, failed to obtain the 72-year-old Cussler's contractually obliged script approval before filming began on the movie.
Cussler, whose real-life adventure credentials include having found the remnants of the sunken Confederate submarine the H.L. Hunley, is seeking at least $10 million in damages and a court order halting production on the flick.
The would-be blockbuster, starring Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz and Steve Zahn, is currently shooting in Morocco, Spain and London. Paramount will distribute the film, which is tentatively scheduled for a fall release.
With a potential franchise on the line, Crusader isn't going down without a fight. The production company has filed a counter suit accusing Cussler of trying to sabotage the film because the company failed to let him write the screenplay.
Neither the author nor his lawyer was available comment, while attorney Alan Rader, who filed the counter claim for Crusader, did not return phone calls Wednesday.
Written in 1992, Sahara follows intrepid adventurer Dirk Pitt, a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones, as he saves the world from environmental catastrophe while working for the fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency.
While scouring the Sahara for a deadly toxin that's killing marine life around the globe, our wisecracking hero thwarts an assassination attempt on a U.N. scientist, solves a few historical riddles and uncovers a disease that's driving West Africans to madness, cannibalism and death--all while battling a greedy industrialist.
Crusader, which recently changed its name to Bristol Bay Productions, bought the rights to Sahara several years ago in hopes of turning Cussler's 26 adventure books, which have sold a combined 130 million copies worldwide, into a James Bond-like film franchise.
But the company has had a hard time getting Sahara going. The film has gone through several scripts over the years. Production was originally supposed to start back in 2002, but it was put on hold after then-director Rob Bowman (The X-Files) dropped out for creative reasons.
Cussler himself has said in previous interviews that he was none too pleased with the various incarnations of his story.
"They've sent me seven scripts, and I've inserted each one in the trash can," the author told the Denver Post late last year. "They say the love story is corny. Why don't they just fly out to Phoenix and slap me in the face."
According to the author's suit, he actually approved an early version of the script, but Crusader altered it without his approval.
However in its counter claim, the company alleged that the author had signed off on a screenwriter but rejected his screenplay before reading it, simply on the basis that the scribe did not travel personally to his home in Arizona to receive script notes.
"Dismissing the screenwriters Crusader had hired with his previous approval as 'clowns,' Cussler made a new demand that he be hired to write Sahara's screenplay," the company said in court documents. "When Crusader declined, because Cussler lacked the requisite screenwriting experience, Cussler became vindictive."
The complaint went on to note that the author's public remarks have resulted in an outcry among his huge devoted fan base, which could potentially produce box-office-killing buzz and cost Crusader upward of $40 million.
Already some Netizens are calling for a boycott of the picture after hearing that much of the original story has been either left out or dramatically altered by the parade of screenwriters, which includes James. V. Hart (Bram Stoker's Dracula) and David S. Ward (Sleepless in Seattle) and Josh Friedman (the upcoming Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise update of War of the Worlds).
A petition supporting Cussler's actions to block the movie was also launched, citing the fiasco that resulted when Cussler's Raise the Titanic was adapted back in 1980 without Cussler's input, and without much success.
"If you bought Dr. Cussler's novels to bring them to the cinematic world then you should consider bringing Dr. Cussler into the fold to help write the screenplay and to bring his wonderful novels to life," reads the petition, which has collected only 1,052 signatures thus far.
Despite the hullabaloo, producers have at least one good thing going for them--Cusslerphiles are apparently pleased with the casting of McConaughey as Pitt. Pics of Pitt also seems to be playing well with magazine editors, as photos of the shirtless actor on the set of the Sahara were prominently featured in both Us Weekly and Star last week.