NEWS: Brett Ratner Refuses to Commit to Conan
By Laura Tucker
It would be nice to have the job security that Brett Ratner seems to feel he has. While the Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, and Rush Hour 3 director had been confirmed to direct the next Beverly Hills Cop film according to this earlier report, producer Avi Lerner broke the news that Ratner had been in final negotiations to direct a remake of Conan the Barbarian as well.
According to the L.A. Times, Lerner was quite excited about signing Ratner, to the point of mentioning that when Ratner was younger, he “even wrote a story about Conan when he was 10 years old.” He also said he liked Ratner’s “childlike enthusiasm” for the project.
The “childlike enthusiasm” seems to have turned to adult rage as once Ratner was contacted, he called the reports of him directing Conan “totally premature.” He seemed to no want to mess up his deal with Paramount to direct the next Beverly Hills Cop film, saying he wanted to be clear, “I am not doing Conan now,” but he seemed to leave it open to possibly taking it on in the near future, after Beverly Hills Cop gets the official green light.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 9:34AM
[...] Brett Ratner’s finally dishing some dirt on his upcoming reboot of Beverly Hills Cop. The director spoke to MTV about his vision for the film, and how he wants to revive the spirit of the 1984 version. The first thing on Ratner’s agenda is to get rid of any speculation regarding the film’s title. He said, “We’re not going to call it ‘4,’ it will be a new ‘Beverly Hills Cop.” He’s also going for stronger content as well, so we won’t being seeing a PG-13 rating this time around. According to Ratner, “it’s a hard R.” [...]