Inside Move: 'War' footing
2nd Martian pic tuning up in Spielberg's wake
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Shortly after the duo's move to fast-track "The War of the Worlds" for release by Paramount and DreamWorks next summer, Brit musician-producer Jeff Wayne announced plans for a musical CGI feature along the lines of his 1978 double album "The War of the Worlds," which sold 12 million copies worldwide and spawned a line of computer games.
Wayne notes in his announcement that he approached Paramount with the property in 1979, but it never materialized into a film.
Sony plans to re-release the album -- a blend of rock and classical compositions that features narration by Richard Burton and songs performed by the Moody Blues' Justin Hayward and Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott -- next year; Wayne plans to set the pic in the Victorian era of the H.G. Wells novel, as opposed to the contempo take planned by Cruise and Spielberg.
"The excitement to me was always that through the eyes of humanity in the 1890s, as opposed to today, a superior force from another planet was far more terrifying," Wayne notes.
Wayne has extensive background in music, with his 38-year-old Jeff Wayne Music Group having released 9,000 soundtracks for film, TV, radio and advertising.
His reps say the film has a $48 million budget, most of it derived from Brit investors; he hopes to begin production by the end of the year.
