It's probably not much of a secret that we don't have a lot of love for McG, a man who made the world's biggest budget shampoo adverts and called them Charlie's Angels movies and whose long shelved We Are Marshall is a whole heap of blah, so we greet the news of his three picture deal with Warner Bros with mixed emotions. On the one hand it means that the world now has the unwelcome knowledge that there will be at least a further triumvirate of spastically edited noise assaults. On the more positive hand, we can make our peace with these projects and move on with our lives for the next three or so years.
One of the films will be Nightcrawlers, an action comedy about a man who must confront his childhood monsters. McG describes it as akin to Men In Black and it does have the benefit of being written by Little Miss Sunshine scripter Michael Arndt.
The second project is an untitled spy pic, currently being re-written by Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams).
The third project is Yucatan, a film that was actually being developed by Steve McQueen – prior to his death, obviously. McQueen's storyboards and notes for the story of hunters in the Yucatan peninsula were recently discovered and the film is being built from them. David Heyman (Harry Potter) will produce. This sounds like a fascinating project. Could it be that we've judged McG too harshly? Does he have dormant skills that this movie could wake from their mediocre slumber? Well, the first season of The OC, which he created, was really good. We just don't know what to believe anymore? Help us Jebus!