Call me crazy, but I actually thought the Rock was already in the midst of filming Spy Hunter. There was even a teaser poster. But now it seems Dwayne’s next videogame to movie adaptation is not to be.
Can Mag reports that director John Woo is lightening his production load by dropping a few projects from his schedule. At the top of his forget about it list is Spy Hunter and the long rumored new version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. They also list The Red Circle and The Battle of Red Cliff on his drop list, but none of us know what those are and so they probably won’t be missed.
Both He-Man and Spy Hunter were supposed to be fairly high profile projects for the Mission Impossible II director, now he’ll have to sell off dozens of cages full of unused doves, or find some other overblown action movie to use them on. Are they dead, or could someone else pick them up? Well, if what CanMag’s scooper says is true, the studio is just as disinterested in doing them as Woo is, so if either film is going to find new life, it'll have to be somewhere else starting from scratch.
At some point Dwayne Johnson, in addition to being in Spy Hunter, was rumored to be in the running for the He-Man role as well, so if you're The Rock it's probably not a good day. He's got plenty of other projects to console him. He'll show up later this year in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, he's finishing up Gridiron Gang, and he's also making an appearance in a movie version of Reno: 911.
Spy Hunter had been slated for a summer 2007 release. Now, not so much.
UPDATED!!
Since CanMag first ran the above rumor and it was picked up by various outlets, people with resources (note: not us) have gone into action to confirm whether or not CanMag's rumor is worth it's salt.
IGN says it's not. They claim they've been told by producers that the movie hasn't been shelved at all. John Woo is off the project, and has been for a long time. But Spy Hunter at least is going ahead anyway. No word on He-Man, but He-Man was never going very fast anyway.
