Michael Gondry eyes ‘Green Hornet’

EW.com reports that arty director Michael Gondry is in talks to direct the GREEN HORNET film after Stephen Chow dropped out late last year, leaving Sony Pictures scrambling to get the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg penned project back on the fast track.

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS star Seth Rogan is set to portray debonair newspaper publisher and crime fighter Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet. The comic actor was sporting a trimmed down physique at the recently televised Academy Awards, suggesting he’s getting in shape for the role.

While no longer directing, Chow is still expected to portray Reid’s martial arts-fighting sidekick Kato. The role was filled on the original TV series by the late Bruce Lee and Chow is one of his biggest fans. The comic genius behind SHAOLIN SOCCER and KUNG FU HUSTLE has been paying homage to Bruce in virtually all of his films since the early 1990s. He’s not a kung fu star by trade but has kept himself in excellent physical condition. My concern is that he’ll be 47 in June, which makes him old enough to be Rogen’s father and certainly past the point where he should be playing anyone’s superhero sidekick, even Kato, who we all know was the better half of this dynamic duo.

I’m also not comfortable with the idea of Chow being directed by a Hollywood filmmaker but Gondry is certainly an interesting choice. I’ve only seen his movie ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND and it’s a brilliantly conceived and executed drama that is anything but the same old Hollywood schlock that resulted in all of Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat’s flawed non-Asian films. With Gondry on board this could turn out to be a film just as quirky as any of Chow’s past work. We’ll have to wait and see.