Oi, Sommers! Pick a project already! King of Umming and Aahhing this year in Hollywood is not Lindsay Lohan deciding on hair colour and weight. It’s Stephen Sommers, best known for the Mummy films and Van Helsing, who seems to be having some trouble sitting down in the director’s chair again.
Earlier in the year, Paramount announced that Sommers had signed to remake When Worlds Collide, the pulp slice of classic sci-fi about the Earth under threat from rogue planets and – guessed yet? – collision.
All was well, but the regime change at Paramount left the new executives cool about the project. Sommers promptly jumped ship and announced he was taking his football and going to Fox to direct what has now become the Ben Stiller cursed-exhibits comedy A Night At The Museum.
Except the story doesn’t end there. In September, Sommers left that as well, citing that old favourite creative differences excuse.
Flip the clock forward to now. In between Sommers ditching Worlds and then leaving Museum, a certain Mr Steven Spielberg came onto the Paramount project. He’s now tempted Sommers to return. We’d like to imagine he did it in the style of Matt Lucas’ rubbish hypnotist from Little Britain: “Look into the beard, the beard, don’t look around the beard…”
Well, maybe not. But now Sommers is happily back at Paramount, all set to unleash CG hell on humanity. Still, he’s got a record – Van Helsing aside for fun epic actioners, so perhaps the right man is back in the job.
