Wyatt drops out of 'Rise' sequel, 'Let Me In' helmer Reeves signs on

One of the main reasons that director Gary Ross decided not to helm Catching Fire, the follow-up to his successful Hunger Games film, as the lead time he felt was needed to get the sequel up and running. But Summit/Lionsgate had other ideas, and rushed the film into pre-production with a script that still needed to be finely tuned. Still, seeing that Hunger Games was a success, perhaps they felt with such a huge built-in audience, whoever helmed the sequel, it did not matter. Or, understanding today’s audiences ADHD issues, they felt the need to expedite it before something else shiny and new came along. The same thing has happened with Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt, who has  dropped out of the sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, because he felt the lead time –the film is already scheduled for May 23^rd, 2014- was too narrow.

Again, one can understand the studios point of view on this. The first film, despite being a prequel to 20^th Century Fox’s long running franchise (though gone fallow), turned out better than anyone ever expected, scoring extremely well at the box-office and garnering a plenty of good reviews. Now Fox has signed Let Me In director Matt Reeves to helm the sequel, which is penned by Rise writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Still, this is not a bad sign, more of the nature that has taken over the Hollywood production system of the last few years. They are setting release dates for films long before one word of the script has been consigned to paper (or computer screen). And their hopes, it seems, is to start pre-production, cast the film, hire director and hope that with all those balls in the air, there is no hiccup that will effect what turns out to be a release date set in stone.