Hier ein recht neuer Artikel über die beiden " Macher " des Myst Films
‘Crazy’ move has locals in ‘Myst’ of film script
By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
Tribune Staff Writer
Patrick A. McIntire and Adrian Vanderbosch have moments where their story seems implausible even to them.
“Even last night we were in the car and I looked at Patrick and said, ‘What are we doing?’ ” Vanderbosch says. “ ‘How is this happening?’ We’ve worked very hard for the past four years to make this happen. It just seems strange that two guys in a basement in the Midwest would be working on a major motion picture.”
That picture is a film adaptation of the celebrated computer game “Myst.”
Vanderbosch, a Cassopolis native now living in South Bend, and McIntire, a South Bend native now living in Granger, have spent the past several years developing a story line and are currently writing a screenplay for a Myst film — “Project Passage” — with the full blessing of the game’s creators.
The graphic adventure, designed and directed by brothers Robyn and Rand Miller, was released in 1993 by Cyan Worlds Inc., a Spokane, Wash.-based gaming studio. “Myst” puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses enchanted books written by an artisan named Atrus to travel to worlds known as Ages. The game has several endings, depending on the actions the player takes.
The game’s success spawned four sequels as well as several spin-off games and three novels published by Disney’s Hyperion throughout the 1990s, but every attempt to bring the stories to either the big or small screen has met with some resistance from Cyan.
“They had already been is discussion with Disney and with the Sci Fi Channel, and both deals kind of crashed and burned,” McIntire says. “They weren’t happy because the concepts kept getting twisted. Cyan and Rand just said, ‘No, we’re not going to do this.’ ”
That is, until McIntire and Vanderbosch pitched their version.
The two filmmakers met in 1997 when Vanderbosch was cast in McIntire’s indie project “Scenario.” Although funding for that film fell through, the two remained close friends even after Vanderbosch headed West to study at the American Academy of Arts.
“We spent a lot of time talking on the phone,” McIntire says. “That’s when I started talking to him about the (‘Myst’) books and he got pretty interested in it.”
“I had played the first ‘Myst’ game,” Vanderbosch says, “so I was familiar with ‘Myst,’ but I had no idea about the novels. He convinced me to pick them up.”
One of those novels, “Myst: The Book of Ti’ana,” which tells the story of a civilization known as the D’ni who live in a large cavern at the center of the Earth, became the basis for their film.
“They’re dynamic and interesting stories,” Vanderbosch says. “At the heart of the books is how having this ultimate power can corrupt or pollute even the best of intentions. We thought it would make great fodder for a film.”
They decided to pitch the idea to Rand Miller and Cyan Worlds.
“The ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and the ‘Harry Potter’ saga were coming out,” Vanderbosch says. “The market was really primed for this sort of film. So I said, ‘Why wait? Why don’t we pitch the idea?’ ”
Not wanting to appear to be just another pair of fans with an idea and a camera, McIntire and Vanderbosch began a long arduous process of creating a trailer for a film that didn’t exist yet.
They produced an animatic, a series of storyboards with dialogue and music, and began looking for commitments from matte painters and visual effects artists. They were just shocked by the high-profile names that responded.
“We thought we had to go after students, and we made contact with seasoned professionals,” Vanderbosch says. “What I think they responded to was our passion. We were being really bold here.”
Carlin Kmetz, a visual artist who has worked on “The Fifth Element” and “X-Men 2,” signed on first. Technical director Louis Katz, who worked on episodes I and II of “Star Wars,” “Superman Returns” and “Kung Fu Panda,” was interested.
Michael DeBeer, whose visual effects credits include “Hellboy” and “Fantastic Four,” and conceptual designer John Howe, who has worked on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Chronicles of Narnia,” were next.
With a lack of funding and a series of high-profile commitments, McIntire and Vanderbosch put together a DVD that contained a video letter outlining their backgrounds and passion for the story, and a rough animatic movie trailer for the proposed motion picture project. They sent it to Cyan Worlds and waited.
“When we finally got around to watching the DVD proposal … we suddenly realized that making a ‘Myst’ movie was not about Hollywood and studios and cigars and agents,” Rand Miller writes on the ‘Myst’ Web site. “It was about passion. So we gave a couple of non-Hollywood types a call and told them we should go for it.”
Both Miller, CEO and creator of ‘Myst,’ and Tony Fryman, president of Cyan Words Inc., were suddenly onboard.
Although McIntire and Vanderbosch could not afford to secure exclusive motion picture rights, Cyan did extend the clearance to use whatever materials, characters and concepts in the ‘Myst’ canon to move forward.
Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting approached the two filmmakers about the project and even asked them to write a treatment for a script.
“Their response was ‘We like what we see, but we need to see more,’ ” Vanderbosch says.
McIntire and Vanderbosch decided they had come too far for their only involvement to be a script treatment, so they held out. Miller and Cyan agreed.
“That’s when Rand said, ‘Maybe we should just go shoot the film,’ ” Vanderbosch says.
McIntire and Vanderbosch began writing the script, turning the first 80 pages over to Miller for approval.
“I think he had like two notes on 80 pages,” Vanderbosch says.
They’ve been working on the script ever since, and have launched a Web site (
http://mystmovie.com) to provide fans with updates about where the project stands.
Vanderbosch says about three-quarters of the anticipated 200-plus-page script is completed. After it is finished and meets Cyan’s approval, they will seek verbal commitments from cast members as their agent starts shopping it to studios.
“A couple of years ago we were waiting to hear back from Cyan,” McIntire says, “and now we are having conference calls with those guys all the time.”
“If you are really unapologetic about doing something crazy,” Vanderbosch adds, “people will come to you.”
Staff Writer Jeremy D. Bonfiglio:
Quelle: South Bend Tribune
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