Kicking & Screaming

[Landis26]

Elephant1978 -


What were the REASONS the original director got fired?

landis

[elephant1978]

The original director was Marco Schnabel. He's a really great guy. He has produced/2nd unit directed for Jay Roach on several films. He's also done a lot of writing. K&S would've been his first time in the director's chair.

From what everybody put together, the situation went like this: Universal greenlit K&S when Will Ferrell was just the guy from Old School. The studio figured it would be a decent moneymaker with a small budget...probably earn between $60-80M...the budget was originally $35M. Then Elf came out and made a trillion dollars. Will became the biggest comedy actor in Hollywood over night. It seemed like Universal had a horseshoe up their arse...but they also got nervous and realized they needed to protect their investment. This little movie could now earn $120-150M.

Now, they couldn't just fire the original director (as far as I know, there are contract and guild protections) until they had a reason. So when we started production Universal picked apart everything he shot. They fired him along with the DP and the Executive Producer. Jesse Dylan was then brought on with his own DP Lloyd Ahern. This is the same team that made $100M for Universal with American Wedding. They poured about $10-15M more into the budget and we now have the K&S you see on the screen. This is the supposed "safe" version of the film.

Ele...

[Salazkin]

Interesting inside look into the politics of filmmaking, ele. Thanks.

[butte123]

Sad what happened with this film. It's also sad that I enjoyed it for nothing more than pure thoughtless entertainment. Who says every movie has to be powerful and life-changing? Although, agreeing with a earlier post, definitely not Ferrell's best.

[Jami]

Dgrunert, I wonder if you saw this film in a theatre packed with soccer parents. Maybe that's why you got the reaction you did.

As a soccer mom myself, I didn't find this movie objectionable in the least. There was a lot I could identify with -- I was the person who got the Brazilian kid on our soccer team -- he wasn't as good as those Italian kids, but better than anyone else on the field -- and I ended up driving this kid hither and yon, helping to teach him English, etc., all so our team would have a chance to win...

... because my son sure wasn't going to make that happen!

The soccer parents are tough. The baseball parents are even worse, probably because soccer is only an hour-long commitment, and baseball is 2-3 hours.

Another thought: The reason why any soccer parent could identify with this film is that we all have asked ourselves, at one time or another, "How did I turn into this crazy person yelling at my child about passing the ball?", just like Will Farrell did.

Would have loved to see the original script, though.


Jami