He hasn’t worked for four years, probably because of how awful his last movie was but British director Stephen Norrington has finally accepted an offer to return to the director’s chair. And it’s for a pretty huge movie too.

Norrington who debuted with BLADE in 1998 but hasn’t directed a movie since the 2003 flop THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN will helm the remake of the cult classic 80’s fantasy movie CLASH OF THE TITANS.

It’s pretty clear that Norrington was far from the first choice for Warner Brothers.

We know that they first went after Sam Raimi and when that attempt failed they moved to the currently out of work Robert Rodriguez but he would turn them down to, despite loving Lawrence Kasdan’s (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) script.

God knows who else they went for in between, but somehow they have ended up with a director who had seemingly lost his passion for the medium.

I really hated with a vengeance what Norrington did to the superb Alan Moore graphic novel and it’s horrible to think that his poor direction is likely to be remembered for being the last movie role for the great Sean Connery but I did like his original BLADE movie.

And well he has a filmography that suggests he began his career in the special effects industry, even working on James Cameron’s ALIENS movie.

I knew Norrington would be back but coming back on board such a huge project is really playing with the fire. And ya know what happens when you play with fire.

WB will release this movie in 2009/2010 with production to begin sometime next year (I believe the script has been turned in, so it’s pre-strike if needed) and expect all of Ray Harryhausen’s original effects to be updated to the CGI crap that plagued Norrington’s last film.

source - variety

Categories: Fantasy, Movie News