Paramount Not Down With Fincher's Too "Risque" Take On The Animated 'Metal'

Back in March it was reported that nu-auteur of the dark and twisted mien, David Fincher, would be one of the directors involved in remaking the animated hesher classic, "Heavy Metal." In fact, he was spearheading the project.

The original animated "Heavy Metal" in 1981 became quite the cult-film boasting a lot of the similarly garish airbrushed art hosted on the side of many a van in the late '70s. It also brandished much of the near soft-core porn, erotica and violence that made the magazine so popular with adolescent boys of the '70s and '80s fond of science-fiction and masturbation (the hesher-heavy rock soundtrack that featured Dio-era Sabbath, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, Blue Oyster Cult, Grand Funk Railroad and many other).

However! According to Entertainment Weekly, Paramount, who were funding the project, have pulled out because their execs felt the movie was "too risque for mainstream audience." Fincher does love his edge-pushing trangressiveness (see some of the weirdo shit in "Seven," hello Lust! "That disease spreading whore!"), but maybe he was gonna make this one extra fucked up and Paramount balked?

Either way the project is now stalled and in limbo until Fincher and his producers find a new studio to back it. However, one producer is pretty certain it will happen one day once they can find some unscrupulous studio that peddles in that sort of immoral smut (dudes, hello, have you not called Lion's Gate??) Read more...

David Fincher Takes A Stab At Some Animated 'Heavy Metal'

David Fincher - he of the dark and twisted cinematic mien - is on a tear. The notoriously fussy and serial killer-prone director ("Zodiac," Fight Club, "Seven") usually takes years between projects quietly developing something he hopes will be up to snuff, but the filmmaker has recently become to a spate of projects - or at least for him.

First off there's that "Fight Club" musical that will likely never happen (but the fact he's even deigned to talk about it is something), than there's the adaptation of three graphic novels; the perverse Charles Burns book "Black Hole," and the "assassin suddenly plagued by his conscience," tale "The Killer;" and the true crime chronicle, "Torso."

Now comes word that he's attached to yet another project; directing part of an animated version of sci-fi nerd fantasy porn magazine "Heavy Metal" according to Variety.

Fincher will direct one segment of the nine-part anthology, with other directors including Kevin Eastman (owner of Heavy Metal) and Tim Miller. All three will produce the film.

Of course there already was an animated "Heavy Metal" movie made in 1981 that became quite the cult-film brandishing a lot of the near-soft-core porn, erotica and violence that made the magazine so popular with adolescent boys of the '70s and '80s fond of science-fiction and masturbation (the hesher-heavy rock soundtrack that featured Dio-era Sabbath, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, Blue Oyster Cult, Grand Funk Railroad and many other 'stache-friendly dude-rockers was also pretty popular at the time).

But before all these prospective Fincher projects, we'll see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" starring Brad Pitt as an old man who physically ages backwards which is due in the fall of 2008. Pitt's character fall in love with a 30-year-old woman (Cate Blanchett) and then must come to terms with the relationship as they literally grow in opposite directions. The film has been wrapped for some time now and the special effects for Pitt to convincingly age backwards have been worked on furiously for months.

Trailer: "Heavy Metal" ('80s version)

Watch: "Heavy Metal" Scene set to Rush's "Necromancer"
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