Not In My Mouth He Isn't: Gervais Update

Following the Ghost Town news here yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter have followed through with more details.

Greg Kinnear will star alongside Ricky Gervais. David Koepp is to direct and cowrote the script with John Kamps. The lead character - presumably Gervais - is a dentist who "dies briefly during routine surgery and gains the ability to see dead people who ask him for help in contacting the living".

Ghost meets The Frighteners meets The Sixth Sense. But different.

No mention of Harry Knowles anyplace in the article, but then, this doesn't sound like the same Ghost Town after all. This one was only pitched in March 2005... at which point Koepp and Kamps earned a cool $2 million for their 'trouble'.

How many films called Ghost Town have been developed over the years? If you beleive imdb, which I don't, the answer is 'too many'. Hopefully one will be a hit so the title goes off the shelf for a bit.

[EDIT: Harry's zombie western is still moving ahead. Indeed, he's having meetings on it today]

Gervais In Ghost Town

Talking to BBC Radio 1, Ricky Gervais let slip some details of the 'romantic comedy fantasy' I told you about in February.

1) It will film in New York from October of this year.

2) The emphasis is apparently on the comedy rather than the romance (read: the romance is redundant, perhaps a cynical, commercial requirment?)

3) The script is the only one Gervais has been sent in five years that he was happy accepting the lead in (read: he's been sent five years worth of absolute rubbish)

4) Gervais described the film as 'twisted' - but I don't know how many big budget films with twisted scripts wound up so, certainly when there's money involved. Fingers crossed, though. What begins twisted should wind up twisted (no pun intedned).

5) And the single most interesting piece of info? That the film is called Ghost Town.

Now, I assume this is the same Ghost Town that Harry Knowles has been producing for the last lord-knows-how-many years. Let's try and get an announcement out of Aint it Cool... I'm about to send Harry a link to this post right now..