Corona | Coming Attractions

The Zone is no more. A week after word broke about Roland Emmerich's next movie project, the 10,000 BC director has pulled the plug on the movie. The film has been scheduled to start filming next week.

While The Hollywood Reporter's Boris Kit doesn't know for sure what the reason was that gave Emmerich cold feet, he does speculate. It could be that there's now too many alien invasion-themed movies in the works, or more specially, an alien invasion-themed movie that also is from the "found footage" sub-genre à la Paranormal Activity or Cloverfield. Just this week we learned that there's a new project called Apollo 18 that has an aggressive production schedule and release date. In fact, Apollo 18 is presently scheduled to open shortly before Emmerich's The Zone would arrive in theaters. That may have killed the box office chances for the latter film, and subsequently given Emmerich cold feet.

- The Hollywood Reporter. Comment on this Scoop (0)

The man who directed Independence Day is returning to give us another alien invasion flick. Roland Emmerich is reportedly slated to direct The Zone, a secret project that The Hollywood Reporter broke word about. Based on a screenplay by Guillaume Tunzini, the style of filmmaking will follow the faux reality footage that movies such as Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project used to tell their stories.

Emmerich is a filmmaker better known for making studio movies that need nine figure budgets. The Zone will mark a departure from Emmerich's typical style of moviemaking; THR reports that the budget for the movie will only run $5 million dollars, and that the dialogue will be mostly improvised.

Two lead roles are known: one a middle-aged journalist, the other a younger cameraman. Sony Pictures will reportedly distribute the movie. Curiously, the studio had no comment to give the Reporter about the story.

- The Hollywood Reporter. Comment on this Scoop (0)