Binh Dang: Official Word On Under Siege 3







Binh
Dang is Co producer on many of Stevens latest projects, my friend who
is a executive at Lions Gate Studios emailed him about Under Siege
3;his reply



"Dear XXX



No at absolutely no stage has Steven willingly dropped out of Under
Siege 3, we have been all trying to get this off the ground since 2002
and Steven has led the way; he has no intention of dropping out of it
until it ceases to become Under Siege 3. The 2002 script pitched to
Steamroller was that similar to Executive Decision whereby the Ryback
character was to encounter Middle eastern terrorists on board a 747 who
had been aided and abetted by a traitor in the US Army. We had
approached Gary Busey to play this role in a similar vein to that of
the original. He was pleased with the script but Steven was not; he
felt it was too discriminatory towards Muslims and anti-Arab and so the
idea was discarded at that stage.

....Studio politics has been in our way from the get go, at first
Warner was unwilling to finance us unless it was for $12m which as you
can imagine is a joke for a film franchise such as this. Steven was
extremely busy and a new script was sent to him in late 2005, this
featured Ryback accompanying his children who were physics students at
a nuclear power plant which was taken over by terrorists. Steven liked
this script and wanted to make changes to it to allow his views on
nuclear warheads and weapons to be aired. The studio didn't like these
alterations and we hit another stumbling block.

In mid 2006 we spoke again with Warners who now wanted the film to go
into their new DVD line which we were against; they didn't like the
nuclear power plant script and after the buzz of Snakes On A Plane were
more insistent on the original plane hijack story......[We] then
drafted another script which is the one that the studios are more
interested in-this features Ryback's son who is a fully grown navy seal
kidnapped by extremist forces in a foreign country and Ryback wages a
personal war in order to get him back.

Our current problem is financing this for more than a $25m outlay and
that Warners want a star to play Ryback Jr and to put less emphasis on
Steven, this is our current problem

.....No Eleniak has not even been approached to star in this film at all.

.... At the moment Warners want to shelve the project until Die Hard
4.0 hits theatres, they are sceptical about the old fashioned hero
saves the day films until they see the money rolling in. They are
throwing an alterated script around to WWE films after the financial
successes of The Marine, See No Evil and their upcoming film The
Condemned which looks good to them.

....We have also approached Paramount but they will only put this into their new DVD line that they have just announced

.... Nu Image are interested and have offered Steven $50,000 just to
read an altered script of the Plane hijack story and want Eric Roberts
and Gary Busey in the film. Steven is undecided on this.

...All i can tell you is that we will be working overtime this year to
get this sorted and whether it will get made or not is up to fate,
Steven though has not dropped out of this and never will.

Hope this clears up the confusion raging around.

? Sa ve dire quoi ?