Jan de Bont, the cinematographer of ‘Speed' and ‘Twister' for Hollywood, is back and he aint ready to retire. Nonetheless, de Bont at the age of 80 years still aims at directing another film to bring his dream to a halt. Even after stepping down from the director's chair for two decades, he has not lost the zeal for the narration and for filmmaking.
De Bont had a smooth career and he only directed five films but he changed the face of the film industry. While his notable successes, “Speed” (1994) and “Twister” (1996), cemented his reputation, his subsequent projects, including “Speed 2: Cruise Control” (1997), “The Haunting” (1999), and “Lara Croft: Some of his albums like “Cradle of Life” (2003) received poor response.
Speaking in an interview with Variety recently, de Bont said that he had been very busy preparing to develop new projects, but to no avail. One of such passion projects that was released is called “Riders in the Sky” which tells about Indian tribes which lived in Midwest states. Moreover, this project was never realized even though I invested a lot of time into pre-production, searching for the appropriate locations and designing the sets.
Another major disappointment was the “Godzilla” picture by de Bont. Despite being prepared with sets, Sony Pictures decided that the project was too expensive, and preferred the script written by Roland Emmerich, which turned out to be even more costly than the amount de Bont had in mind. De Bont also complained a lot, pointing to the quality of the script and the fact that he really loves the “Godzilla”, particularly “Godzilla Minus One”.
De Bont's background is also in the cinematography field and he made contributions to such films as “Cujo” (1983), “Die Hard” (1988), “The Hunt for Red October” (1990), and “Basic Instinct” (1992). Many modern action and thriller movies owe their visuals to his talent in this particular field.
Now, de Bont is keen on securing funding for his next, and possibly final, directorial project for a studio. ”But there's still some ideas that I have that make for a really exciting movie,” he says. “I mean, one more would be good. “
As fans of his work, we can only sit idly and wait for Hollywood to wake up and see that de Bont's magic is still alive and offer him one last shot at making the perfect movie. Still, any career as illustrious as his should have a proper send-off.
