Pow
Galactic Ambassador
Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 3424
Location: New York
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 Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2023 10:49 pm Post subject: Sinbad And The Seven Wonders Of The World (Proposed Project) |
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Sinbad's fiance Princess Scherezade is kidnapped with her captors demanding the seven pillars of wisdom. When combined, the pillars would form a pyramid that reveals the secret of eternal life. The journey would take Sinbad to the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria, where he meets Ali Baba, the giant pyramids of Giza, Olympia and the games, a fight with a dragon in Rhodes, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Warrior of Ashes with its skeletal horses, Ephesus, where he battles the Amazons and their goddess Hectate, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where he discovers the Book of the Dead.
The idea of a Harryhausen feature involving the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World has great appeal to me. I do not believe there has ever been a class A movie centered around the Wonders? The challenge would have been Ray & his partner Charles Schneer securing the funding for such an ambitious movie. Sinbad & the Eye of the Tiger (1977) b was budgeted at $3 million by Columbia, the studio Ray & Charles worked the most with. MGM gave them $15 million do produce Clash of the Titans in 1981. So unless Columbia would have been willing to pony up a similar budget for Wonders, MGM, or another movie studio would have to provide a lavish budget in order to depict the Wonders, in addition to all the other requirements to shoot such a film.
Model work, matte paintings, and partial practical sets would do the job for recreating the Seven Wonders.
While the Wonders being featured on screen sound epic, the outline of the plot that we have here didn't excite me at all. I just have no interest in seeing Sinbad done a fourth time by Mr. Harryhausen. Sinbad was simply a one-dimensional hero with nothing new to offer audiences. I feel that Ray needed a fresher and new approach with such a potentially terrific project. And all these years later we still haven't had a major motion picture about the Seven Wonders. So Ray was on the right tract to consider embracing a topic that has not been filmed many times before. |
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