Life used to be much easier. I remember a time when iconic figures would only have two biopics being made about them. Now it's a crazier era, in which a person may have any number of films being made about him or her. Poor Columbus; poor Capote; poor Harvey Milk. I guess none of them were good enough for three biopics. Not like Salvador Dalí, who I already wrote about today (and he seems to have a lot more than three in the works), or Pablo Escobar. According to the New York Times, there's more than just the Joe Carnahan and the Oliver Stone/Antoine Fuqua versions of the drug kingpin's story. Joining them at the American Film Market is another pic, which is to be helmed by Resident Evil: Apocalypse director Alexander Witt. Though he only has one credit to his name as the big man in charge, and it's something as crappy as RE:A, Witt is a true veteran of the industry, having worked as second unit director and DP for many of Jan De Bont and Ridley Scott's films (including this week's new release, American Gangster). Plus, he shot footage for Casino Royale, The Bourne Identity and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He's even worked for Spielberg and Altman. So, he has to have learned something. Right?

Witt's Escobar project is simply titled Escobar, and is based on original research rather than a book. It has been scripted by Richard Rionda Del Castro (Sid Furie's Partners in Action) and Greg Mellott (Sid Furie's Direct Action, The Rage and American Soldiers), so it's probably fair to assume this one will be more of a low-budget-action-type depiction. Still, Del Castro claims the film has a budget between $22 million and $28 million; he also says his is further into production than the others. We'll see -- let the race to theaters, and our drug-dealer-loving hearts, begin!

If there's one thing you can say for Jan De Bont's Stopping Power, it's that it has, well, stopping power. After signing John Cusack to star in the flick, and then promising us a 51-minute chase scene to wrap up the film (can that finish a film if it's at least half of the movie?), production has stopped yet again. Variety reports that some investors have questioned their involvement with the picture and pulled their funding, which, of course, stopped the film dead in its tracks. (Here is a link to JoBlo, as Variety's link to the story isn't working.) While I would have been interested to see how one could possibly pull off an almost-hour-long chase sequence, this is probably for the best. Unless De Bont finds more suckers investors to take over.

Now I can only hope, yet again, that Cusack's next film has the same fate. This leads me to a thought: what happened to John Cusack? While he's still loved by many, his drawing power has diminished greatly. Although he has worked continually over the years; remember when he starred in Grosse Pointe Blank and became the "it" man once again? From there, he had some decent roles, and then hit things out of the ballpark again with Being John Malkovich and High Fidelity. He was the guy to see, but then something happened. Did the allure fade and we got too used to him being around? It's time he ignores the crap and finds another tasty movie to remind us just how great Lloyd Dobler is. What do you think has happened to Cusack?

This is sad news for all of us who were looking forward to John Cusack in an action thriller from Jan De Bont. Apparently someone had the power to stop Stopping Power, and the planned movie has been killed, Variety reports. That someone is actually a financial backer that pulled out suddenly at the last minute. The $40 million production was scheduled to begin filming in Berlin very soon with a cast that included Jason Isaacs and Melissa George. Internationalmedia, a Munich-based company that was co-producing the movie, will be dealing with the back-out backer in court, but hasn't revealed who the backer is, though. So far at least one of Internationalmedia's subsidiaries, IM Stopping Power GmbH, which was set up specifically for Stopping Power, has had to file for insolvency.

While Jan de Bont might not be having the best luck with his other projects, it looks like his next far-fetched action title, Stopping Power, is moving along nicely. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy) and Melissa George (30 Days of Night) have joined John Cusack in the action thriller. Cusack stars as a single father whose family RV is hijacked by a criminal on the run while vacationing in Germany. To save his daughter, he is forced to act as a 'decoy driver' for the escaped con, becoming embroiled in a high-stakes police chase. George is set to play Cusack's girlfriend, and Isaacs will play the criminal. That's not much of a surprise; Isaacs' resume is littered with "bad-guy" roles. Plus, if anyone can handle over-the-top villainy, it would be Isaacs; if you don't believe me, take another look at his performance in The Patriot.

Back in May, Scott Weinberg told us that de Bont was promising Stopping Power would include a 51-minute chase scene. Remember de Bont before the lifeless Tomb Raider films and the lame remake of The Haunting; this was the same director who brought us Speed. So the man does know his way around "vehicular action." The original draft of the script was written by The Hitcher scribe, Eric Red, but has reportedly undergone some rewrites from Richard Shepard (The Matador) and Skip Woods (Swordfish). With casting now in place, the production is ready to start shooting in Berlin this September. Stopping Power is scheduled to hit theaters in 2008.

All of you Meg fans, including Cinematical horror expert Scott Weinberg, should be happy to hear that the movie is not quite dead in the water yet. Novelist Steve Alten, who has written four Meg books, is still having ongoing discussions with other studios now that New Line has abandoned the project. He mentioned this during an exclusive interview with the Monsterfest Blog, and he also stated that Jan De Bont is still the best director to handle an adaptation of his giant shark tale. However, the script by Shane Salerno will likely not be able to be transported to whatever studio picks the thing up.

In the interview, Alten details the history of the Meg movie rights, and now I feel pretty bad for ever criticizing modern novelists for having it so easy when Hollywood comes calling. Alten claims he had to sell his car just to get the first book edited. Then he sold the rights to Disney/Hollywood Pictures and was able to buy a house. Then Disney didn't end up making the thing and Alten lost the house. He likely had thought he was on top again when New Line acquired the rights, but obviously now the author is in a downward slope once again. Alten says that the problem at Disney was that neither a script by Tom Wheeler or a script from Jeff Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) met with execs approval, and then all those execs left the studio and Meg was forgotten. He doesn't go into the reasons for the project's failure at New Line, but we had heard before he felt the studio treated it like "an unwanted stepchild." Hopefully Alten can find the right studio execs who will treat Meg like a media-friendly celebrity treats an adopted child.

Jan de Bont and John Cusack? OK, sure, why not? According to the unending series of Cannes news reports at Variety, the director of Speed and that lovable guy from Say Anything are about to collaborate on Stopping Power, a $50 million action flick about a normal Joe test pilot who must rescue his daughter from evil kidnappers while vacationing in Germany. Production begins in August, and although the package has sold to a few foreign markets, we should expect some U.S. distribution news sooner rather than later.

What's particularly enticing about this project (aside from it marking Cusack's return to the action genre, a section he's avoided since his very amusing turn in Con Air) is that Mr. De Bont is promising to finish the flick with a 51-minute chase sequence. And it get even better: The story was hatched by Eric Red, the scribe who (once upon a time) penned The Hitcher and Near Dark, both of which are unquestionable classics of the horror genre because I said so. (Apparently Swordfish screenwriter Skip Woods also worked on the Stopping Power script.) The only sticking point (for me) is the involvement of Jan de Bont, a stellar cinematographer who graduated to director on the effortlessly entertaining Speed ... and then followed it up with Twister, Speed 2, The Haunting and Tomb Raider 2. Yikes.

Maybe if we all wish hard enough, John Cusack's latest role will wipe out the Children of Men rip-off, Talking with Dog, which still (luckily) hasn't gone into production. The rest of the films on his plate have already wrapped or gone into production. There's War, Inc., where Cusack plays a hit man assigned to kill a Middle East oil minister. With Mark Leyner's mind attached, it will undoubtedly go above and beyond what we could imagine. And there's Igor, the animated, star-studded evil science fair, movie that he took over from Christian Slater. Now, Cusack has signed on for an action thriller, of all things.

The film is called Stopping Power. (Doesn't it sound like something Steven Seagal would be in?) It will be directed by Jan de Bont, who started off with a bang with films like Speed and Twister, but then petered out a bit with Speed 2: Cruise Control and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Or, more appropriately, crashed and burned with the former and then petered out with the latter. The film, which will be written by Swordfish scribe Skip Woods and Hitcher scribe Eric Red, is about "a test pilot who sets off on a series of high-speed chases to save his kidnapped daughter from an escaped thief."

Woods seems to be a new addition to the roster, as IMDb lists only Red. The site also describes the plot a little differently: "A criminal on the run steals an RV with a young girl inside, then forces the girl's father to participate in his getaway by acting as a decoy for the police." I'm anxious to see if Cusack just picked this up for something different, or if it will be his gateway into action. Remember -- Bruce Willis was the goofy guy on Moonlighting well before he was John McClane.

Several years back I read a book called MEG by Steve Alten. It's about a massive prehistoric shark who ascends from the deepest depths of the Marianas Trench and caused all sorts of high-end mayhem. (Picture a shark about the size of a blimp.) I distinctly remember thinking as I read the novel: Wow, it'd be really expensive, but darn this could make for a pretty slick movie!

And then Disney bought the movie rights, which they held on to for a while before New Line came in and picked the property up "in turnaround." Since then we've learned that Jan De Bont has been signed to direct the big shark adventure and that action veteran Shane Salerno would be on adaptation detail ... so where's the production date? Where are all the casting reports?

Well, according to Variety, New Line might be just a little bit stingy with the purse-strings these days, what with big projects like Rush Hour 3 and The Golden Compass demanding so many resources -- but De Bont is still confident that MEG will see the inside of a multiplex, most likely sometime in 2008. Obviously it's the mega-pricey FX work that's causing MEG to swim extra slowly -- or for all we know New Line might just decide to ashcan the whole darn thing.

But I really hope not. The world deserves a movie in which a blimp-sized monster shark who chows down on yachts and helicopters. Well, I deserve one anyway.

Best known for the film Speed, Jan de Bont has signed on to direct another action-packed thrill-ride called Stopping Power. Pic will revolve around a single father on vacation with his daughter and girlfriend. When the RV they're traveling in gets hijacked, the father finds himself wrapped up in a high-speed police chase across town, forced to act as a decoy in the getaway car.

Damn, talk about a crappy situation: One minute you're enjoying some Wheat Thins in the back of your RV, and the next you're being chased by the cops, wanted for a crime you did not commit and your family is missing. Sure, it gets you out of cleaning the RV's septic (tank? pipe? bag?) for the day but, personally, I'd clean that bad boy with a toothpick if it meant I would avoid going to prison.

Du Bont is also behind such films as Twister, The Haunting and, most recently, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life. Richard Shepard (The Matador) will be doing the rewrite off an original script penned by Eric Red. No word yet on the casting front, though I'm sure you will hear the name Keanu Reeves tossed around quite a bit. However, I could see Paul Walker landing this kind of gig.

Several years ago I stepped into a local "mom & pop-owned" bookstore, on the hunt for a new horror novel to read. (I read horror novels like most people eat fast food.) The first thing I saw was a really big display full of paperbacks called MEG, and attached to the display was a hand-written sign that read: "Local author Steve Alten's smash sensation!" Now, I'm all about supporting my Philadelphia brethren, but it wasn't the sign (or the fact that Steve and I graduated from the same high school) that commanded my attention.

It was the massive prehistoric shark that caught my eye. (Yes, just like the one seen in the above pic, which is a piece of MEG pre-production concept art that recently surfaced at CHUD.com.)

MEG is short for Megalodon, and a Megalodon is a giant shark that could swallow a boat without even bothering to use its teeth. Obviously I dropped the eight bucks on the novel, read the thing in less than a week, and then loaned it out to some friends. (A few years later I was happy to pick up Alten's MEG sequels, The Trench and Primal Waters.) Since I'm nothing if not a ravenous geek, especially when giant prehistoric sharks are involved, I read all three novels with a cinematic eye, occasionally thinking things like "oooh, that'd make for a great action scene" or "hmm, I wonder what actor would play this character..."